I think I’ve changed my Twitter bio about 12 times. It could be more but it’s certainly not less.
I’ve been thinking about what the bio itself represents. As with most social media platforms, the bio is one of the first parts of ourselves that people come into contact with, along with our profile photo and display name. It’s how we introduce ourselves to one another and it plays an important role in determining who we choose to connect with online. It attempts to serve as a concise representation of our identity – or more accurately, the identity that we choose to put forth; one of the persons that we want to be seen as.
For some of us, the act of writing a bio can be a tumultuous experience as we try to capture and summarize the entirety of ourselves into 160 characters or less. This is especially true for multi-passionate creatives who have a plethora of interests but are trying their best to “niche down”.
Last year, I began saving the various iterations of my bio. Why? Because we don’t always remember our previous selves especially as much of living is focused on moving forward. I also wanted to have a visual representation of my evolution.
What’s interesting about my past bios is that the majority of them did not feel “right”. They felt inaccurate and even pretentious at times. I realise now that I felt this way because I did not have the words to describe the phase of life that I’m currently in. These words were only brought to my attention last week during the first coaching call that I had with an amazing growth coach. When she said the words, many of my experiences over the past year made sense immediately.
I’m paraphrasing some of this but overall she said, “Renée, you are in a transitory period of your life. You’ve explored one path and now you have realised that it’s time to explore another path. You won’t have everything figured out just yet and that’s okay.”
I never understood why it was such a difficult process for me to write my bio and why I felt the need to change it so frequently. Now, I see that because I’m in a transitory phase of my life, I’m not going to be able to write a “perfect bio” that clearly highlights what my business is, who I want to help and how I want to work with clients.
What I can do is describe the path that I’m currently on and let people know the direction that I’m headed. I’m deepening my self-understanding and clarifying my business’s core values every day. The path ahead isn’t clear but I see now that these are exciting times. I’m grateful to have the time to clarify and work on the foundation of my business as there is much room for growth and expansion.
It’s such a relief to lean into the “pathless path” of sorts and to let go of needing to have everything planned and sorted out.
I think this is the clearest Twitter bio that I’ve written to date.
I’m sure it will change once again and that’s fine as well, it’s all part of the journey.