Life Without LinkedIn

For the better part of the last decade, I have been on LinkedIn where  I would average close to 3500 views for many of the posts I did. Several of them went viral, A lot of them were blog posts in which I attempted to educate new business owners on the ins and outs of effective communication. I published more than 300 blog posts when they gave a shit about that stuff. And I commented a great deal on the posts I both agreed and disagreed with.

You could say I was a pretty good member. I can only recall getting three warnings, but there were probably a few more since I am vehemently anti-idiocy.

Over the years I had built up a modest following of about 3500 souls. Then one day, about a week ago now I found myself locked out of the site. The way to get back in was to go through what turned out to be a constantly repetitious set of functions that took me absolutely nowhere.

The only reason I have any presence on that site at the moment is because my posts are being published by my friends at Biz Catalyst. I hope they will publish this one because perhaps it will get through to someone at LinkedIn who can, at the very least, explain to me why this is happening.

LinkedIn, as many of us know, is primarily a recruitment site. But it’s also a site where a lot of business issues and political issues are discussed. And of course, they are, especially in America, where LinkedIn’s largest audience resides, pretty much intertwined.

As a Canadian who pays a lot of attention to US politics, I like to think that my point of view, if nothing else is semi-objective. If I were an American I would probably be a Democrat as opposed to a Republican, because in Canada I am pretty much a Liberal, mainly because the Conservative party in our country hasn’t had any solid leadership for decades.

The weird thing is that LinkedIn only tells you that you are in trouble and never bothers to explain why that is so you can course correct. If I am in trouble for something I did, and they explained that to me, I would definitely stop doing whatever that was because A) I am not an idiot and b) I am a professional writer and it’s a relatively easy thing for me to do.

During the course of trying to get back on LinkedIn I reached out to a LinkedIn friend with whom I am also connected on Facebook, and he, in turn, reached to LinkedIn out on my behalf.

Lo and behold, the response he got was something that sent me to the same link I get every time I try and open LinkedIn myself. And round and round it went.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the lights are on there, but nobody’s home.

So for the past week, I have been in the process of learning to live without it.  And you know what, life is not so bad. I belong to several other sites and it seems, at least at the moment, that the longer I live without access to LinkedIn, the less I miss it. The only thing I do miss about it is a small discussion group that I belonged to that consisted of four very bright people that I have gotten to know.

I can keep up to speed on a lot of the stuff that interests me, especially the wild west show that AI has turned into and the US political circus through several emails I receive regularly.

Plus, in a couple of weeks, my pool will be open and I can start meditating on a new series of short stories that I will write at the end of the summer season.

Who knows, maybe LinkedIn has actually done me a favour by locking me out the way they have. Hopefully, I will still have a presence there through my published Biz Catalyst posts. I’ll try to make them as useful as I can, because what’s the point of having more than fifty years of experience in the high end of any business, without being able to share your insights.

So to quote, the master, Bob Dylan, which I often do.

“Time will tell

Just who has fell

And who’s been left behind

When you go your way

And I go mine”