2 weeks to launch: I Gave the Internet My Life. Then I Had to Take It Back.
Influencing gave me the world. Walking away taught me who I am.
Welcome to my book launch series, where each week leading up to my pub date (August 12) we dive into a topic from the book. We’re two weeks out everybody. Time to get those pre-orders in!!!!!!!
Eventually, my mental deterioration started to impact my work.
I was hired to do a sponsored set of stories for a healthy dog food brand. Now that I had Samson, I was getting inundated with new opportunities for dog-related products. I’d already recorded the videos and they’d been approved. But for some reason, when the scheduled time to post came, I couldn’t do it. A few minutes passed, then a half hour, then an hour, then three. I was getting continuous texts from my manager
“Hey Lee! The brand wants to know when you plan on posting the stories?”
“Hey Lee, we gotta post today.”
She called, but I wouldn’t answer. I curled up in a ball on my rug, my heart pounding. I couldn’t bear to open the Instagram app. I finally uploaded the stories just so my manager’s calls and texts would stop. I felt such a deep self-loathing and disconnect from the character I was forced to portray online: a healthy, happy Lee with a bright smile and all the products she could ever want. I didn’t wait to see how the stories performed. I just quickly closed the app and stayed on the floor for another hour, Samson coming over every now and then to sniff my face.
- If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die, pages 203-204
The truth is, lying on the floor, paralyzed by dread, unable to open your inbox or Instagram, isn’t exclusive to influencers. Burning out is a universal experience.
But the thing about influencing is, your struggle is all public, or at least, it feels like it is. A million little eyes are watching you. And if you’re looking for a fun new hobby, you can always obsessively check whether that little number is growing or shrinking, and then tie your entire sense of worth to it!
Your breakdown—or, I’ll speak in first person—my breakdown—was up for millions of viewers to witness.
My unraveling happened swiftly. It was October 2018. I broke up with my European ex on a Friday, and, days later, was being dragged online over the cost of my workshops. I was completely alone, living the darkest hours of my life. I get more into it in the book, but thoughts of suicide crept in. It was terrifying.
The cancellation fundamentally changed the way I see business, female empowerment, and public opinion (it was the best thing that ever happened to me).
But I didn’t have the gift of time or perspective yet, and I was NOT doing well. Within weeks, I was eating less and wondering if I should do drugs again. I went on a trip to Japan, where I was getting paid to look like I was having a great time. I got to bring a +1, and because I barely had any friends, I brought my mom.
Something deep inside of me was screaming, but I was desperately trying to keep it all together for my audience, for my livelihood, for all the time and energy I’d put into my page. By this time, my daily stories views were in the hundreds of thousands, my DMs were never ending, the brand deals were huge and raking in the cash, and I was becoming increasingly obsessed with what you all thought of me.
After returning from Japan in early December, I thought it’d be a fabulous idea to adopt a dog. My mental health was deteriorating, I was paranoid, wasn’t sleeping, was becoming increasingly OCD around food and getting cancelled. Name a better time to adopt an 8-week-old puppy!
Samson may be a dog, but in many ways, he’s also godlike to me, in that he was a godsend. God is dog spelled backwards.
The arrival of Samson was comical. He tore down my 30-foot stone walls of rigidity, where I said goodbye forever to self-care to the point of self-obsession. Long gone were the days of 45-minute meditations at dawn, of oil training while I balanced on two feet in front of the Waning Gibbous moon at night with crystals on my crown.
By January, things were so bad I was having regular panic attacks, like the one in the excerpt above. I could barely do my job. By this time, the voice inside me that was telling me to log off and give myself a break was so loud I couldn’t ignore it. Luckily, my apartment flooded, and combined with a cockroach infestation, it was just the nudge I needed to finally say goodbye.
The flood was the kicker. Now that I was basically homeless and sleeping on friends’ couches, my studio-slash-content-house (also known as my home) was gone, and I had little to no choice but to take a break from the internet.
Here was my routine during my peak influencer days, months leading up to my breakdown:
I’d upload a story of me on my way to my morning workout (usually SoulCycle or an Equinox class; both memberships were gifted), then my Matcha Mornings pouring video, then a grid post midmorning of either my matcha or an intricate breakfast. Then I would do a series of story posts in the late morning, normally seven to eight videos that were fifteen seconds each. In these, I’d host a Q&A or pose reflective questions for women—like why we’re always the ones to apologize when someone bumps into us—or share step-by-step tutorials, such as how I organized my fridge. Then I would do another grid post in the early afternoon about a topic like dry brushing, oil training, fasting, or PCOS, followed by two to three more stories. Then I might do a third and final grid post at night: my dinner, a photo of my candlelit tub, an evening adaptogenic tea blend, or some before-bed stretching. Each grid post took hours to style and shoot. Then I had to select the photo from the dozens—sometimes more than a hundred—I had taken. Then I edited and retouched it—making myself brighter, my clothes pop, the greenery or sky pop too. I also photoshopped out any wires, electrical outlets, or other nonorganic things from my pictures. I used the Snapseed photo app for brightening specific areas, and then VSCO’s K3 filter for an overall sunny glow. After posting, I’d sit hunched over my phone as the comments poured in. I could tell within the first minute if the post would do well; I’d studied and memorized my post analytics. If it got seventy-three likes within a minute of going up, it would be “successful” in my eyes.
- If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die, page 107
Due to this consistent dedication, I found great success. But it came at a great cost. I lost friends, lovers, partners, coworkers.
But here’s the funny thing. Once I hit the end of my rope, influencing was the easiest thing in the world to walk away from.
Isn’t that funny.
How something so meaningful, so important, so life-giving, so prioritized, so beautiful, so disastrous, so important to us, our whole world…
can be the first thing to go when it comes to life or death.
I can’t wait for you guys to read it.