The first (and last) time I ghosted my email list was in 2014. I had just started publishing consistently on the internet like a pro. Week after week I was getting something out. I'd been proud of my streak. But then I wrote a piece that some thought was...problematic.
And by "some" I mean one.
One person didn't like it. One person who was not on my email list, not one of my readers, and not someone whose opinion I cared for. AND STILL.
I. was. mortified.
Like the professional writer I was, I decided to ghost.
Well, I didn't so much decide to ghost as I simply ghosted.
Poof. Bye. Gone.
I couldn't bring myself to show my face online (to the grand mass of ~300 people I'd acquired by then).
I let three months go by.
In dating, we ghost to avoid telling someone the truth. If you ghost, you don't have to say to a person's face: “I don't like you. I'm not sure about you. I’m seeing someone else I like better. I don't want to date you.”
It's a decision via indecision.
In the creative world, we ghost to avoid telling ourselves the truth. "I'm ashamed of what I put out. I'm not sure I have what it takes. I did something wrong. I'm not sure I can do this. I just want my mom to like me. Maybe I don't actually want this as badly as I thought."
If you ghost, you don't have to confront the reality that sometimes we mess up. Sometimes we put subpar, hurried, and unedited work out into the world. Sometimes we are too ashamed to try again. Instead of facing that truth, we can simply pretend to fade out. Disappear. We tell people we "just got really busy and, you know, that's just how it is sometimes."
Sometimes that's true, though most times it isn't. You know when you're ghosting and when you're sincerely busy. You know.
For me, it was facing the reality that I wasn't as skilled of a writer as I thought. That I needed more reps. And that I was never ever going to be able to write in a way that made everyone like me. Some people were not going to like what I had to say, people were going to find flaws in my arguments, and I was going to be doing all of that in public.
Once I was able to face why I was ghosting, I was able to come out of hiding.
That experience taught me that it's quite OK to ghost. We are human, not robots and sometimes we need to tap out of the limelight for a hot second.
The more important piece is that we come back. That after we ghost, we take responsibility for ghosting, we face the real reason why, and we come back to our Practice.
Ghost tonight, come back tomorrow.
👻
Margo
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Margo + Kristin