How to manage your online brand

How to manage your online brand Melissa broke up with her boyfriend. Thank god, because I never liked him. I have never liked any of her boyfriends, and the most unlikable of her boyfriends would say Im overbearing and jealous. I would say I just have a good eye for men. Heres the summary of Melissas love life in twitter-short  snippets. College boyfriend who emerges  semi-regularly to have insanely expensive dinners and violent  sex that should only exist in the sophomoric porn videos he saw it in. Tokyo boyfriend who I think was her boss. Not that women should not date their boss, but like most in this situation, Melissa got fired. Farm visitor who I suspected right away to be a cad, but I thought maybe he could redesign my web site. I didnt let him sleep in Melissas bedroom because what would I tell my kids? He agreed. Told Melissa hed be back in a week.  Then he was gone forever. A guy in Austin who got her an engagement ring and then let his mother do the wedding planning. Also, he remodeled his house and put in cheap windows without asking Melissa first. Im not sure which was worse, but in any case, Melissa left him. But she needed someone to carry the big pieces of  furniture out. So she asked his best friend to do the heavy lifting and when they got the sofa to her new apartment, they put it in the corner and made out on it. I did not like this latest boyfriend. Though I tried to like him because I know thats what good friends do when their friend is in a serious relationship. I told myself hes a good guy. But then Id realize that hes more a good guy for someone who is not Melissa. The  details of how she finally saw that he was better for someone else are these: He is an ISTJ, so his interests are narrow, covering only those things he is an expert in. Melissa and I are interested in everything. We will make judgments based on nothingwe dont carewe will still think we are right. Melissas employee Dana should marry the ISTJ. Dana is an ENFJ and she needs someone who will make money so she can focus on being a great caretaker, and the ISTJ needs a good caretaker, and Melissa is a lot of things, but not that. So Melissa dumped  the ISTJ. And now she is worried that you will all think shes a loser. I told her she would look like a loser if everyone thought her life was perfect. Anyone can look pathetic and insecure trying to convey a perfect life.  The rules of managing your personal brand are deeper than just be perfect and funny, which is why Melissa is so likable online. Rule 1:  The most attractive attribute of a personal brand is self-knowledge. So get some.   While she was breaking up with the ISTJ, Melissa decided she wants kids. Melissa has been absolutely 100% against having kids for the last ten years.  Shed send me articles and tell me to write about them, but heres  what I know about women who choose not to have kids: They are INFJs who always end up having kids in their 30s, They had terrible childhoods and cant imagine themselves as good parents with no good role model, which means they are not actually choosing not to have kids as much as they are choosing to continue to  continue living their terrible childhood in adult life, They are too picky about men (because of insecurities) and so they  tell themselves they never found the right guy. They think people who have kids are boring and conventional  but people who worry about becoming boring are actually already boring and they will find this out   too late. Im stopping here  but I could go on and on (and Im sure Ill argue with you in the comments) because what I want to say is that I always knew Melissa would want kids, eventually. But Melissa deciding to want kids now is an emergency because Melissa is 30. And by now most of you know  my mathematical thinking about babies. Her clock is ticking and men dont like dating women with biological clocks that are ready to explode. Its too much pressureno wonder OK Cupid found that men want to date women who are 28. Rule 2: Be strategic.  Its your life so dont let it just happen. I wanted to make a plana list of the attributes Melissa is looking forwhich means we need a picture of the life she is trying to get. Melissa resisted. She consulted the (mysteriously very talkative) INTJ group that goes along with the INTJ course. The group is extremely active  (probably because INTJs think everyone is stupid except INTJs and they rarely find other INTJs). So of course they said Im approaching dating like an ENTJ. ENTJs are too goal-oriented, they said. WTF?? Is there another way to date? Is there another way to function when you are 30 and want kids? I wanted to know what the INTJs came up withwhat is their non-goal-oriented dating plan? Melissa wouldnt tell me. But I was like, I dont even care. Dont call me with reports for any of your dates because its stupid. How do we know if they are good or bad dates if we dont even know the KPIs? We didnt  talk for a week while, presumably, she went  on a million dates. Or emailed with a million people. I dont even know what she was doing. But she called. She found the guy. I told her I had to go to the gym. Rule 3:  Surround yourself with people who make you better. She made  me talk to her at the gym. He is an ENTP.  Melissa brings this up early in our conversation because she knows a good way to keep me in the game is to tell me a personality type. I am happy. Our favorite course was the one for  ENTPs. They are fun and will talk about anything. The good-friend worry I should have for her is about how ENTPs have a hard time working for people. But this  guy somehow affords a  three-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. So its a non-issue. He is  not Jewish but he  has so many Jewish friends that hes able to make references that Melissathe most secular Jew in the worlddoes not understand. So she found a non-Jew more Jewish than her. Melissa likes him so much that instead of doing incompetent, Asperger dating, she is calling neuro-typical friends to find out how to follow dating rules that regular people know instinctively. She does not like the rules and largely ignores them, but shes trying. Thats how I know hes important to her. Rule 4:  Fail in public. A lot. That makes you real.   Hes so important that she wants to edit this post about her finding him. She never cared enough to ask to edit other posts. I tell her forget it. I tell her she is lovable because she  is vulnerable  in public, and she  keeps trying over and over again. People dont want to be close to people who live in a perfect dreamland. There are all these people writing about how they are not doing Instagram any more because its fake. Doing all the beautiful pictures makes them do fake things. But why? You can be engaging and beautiful and yet still focus  on the terribleness of life. Dorothea Lange. Walker Evans. People like grit. People like being scared for the subject. Even Georgia OKeeffe had to paint flowers that made you scared they were about to have their period. Rule 5:  Let yourself grow and changebe a hypocrite.   So this post is Melissas gorgeous life. Its also Melissas brave life. She always thinks shes going to get married with each new guy. But so far, she hasnt. She was militant about not having children and now shes not. And she was dying to grow her recruiting business and now she only wants to start a family. We all change our minds. We all grow. The brand we should show online, where prospective mates can see, is of someone willing to change and grow and contradict ourselves. Thats the life worth living, a lifetime of learning and growth.