12.10.2026
Someone was telling me that I shouldn’t post anything critical of any institutions on LinkedIn because it gives the wrong impression. For instance, criticising the NHS for its malpractice after my operation. They said that LinkedIn should just be about work stuff.
What did I say? I said that my work is that I’m a writer. Yes, I am a paid author. I’ve published continuously throughout my whole adult life: student newspapers, journalism websites, book reviews, poetry magazines, websites, academic publishing, curatorial work, social media, etc. It is my job to write. I am posting my work. Any time that I write, it is work related.
But then, the objection. What if someone saw it and used it against you? If someone doesn’t like my writing and doesn’t like me as a result of it, so what? I don’t care. And how can they use it against me? I haven’t committed any crimes. Free expression means exactly that. Free expression. Just because someone doesn’t agree or doesn’t like it, it doesn’t mean that anything that I am saying is actually wrong.
Loss of job opportunities? Seriously, what has LinkedIn ever done for me? To say that it would is a joke. I got on LinkedIn because a colleague told me that they got job offers off it. I have never been approached for any job the whole time that I have been on it even though I am in the same industry as the other person.
And the other scenario, that maybe someone would check up on me and think twice about offering me a job depending on what they thought about what I wrote? I literally do not care. I don’t work for money like everyone else. I’m sorted out with my family. I don’t need to work. My writing is more important to me than a little bit of extra money.
Other than that, I’ve never been scared of anyone my whole entire life as far back as I can remember. Yes, that’s right. I don’t feel fear. To be a writer means to be brave. It means that you challenge the boundaries and the conventions. If I didn’t want to stick out, if I was a shrinking wallflower, if I didn’t tell the truth, critical or not, I would have to look down at myself. And I don’t look down at myself. I am my own hero.
The world can disapprove of your writing and your thoughts. They can defend the wrongdoers instead of the ones that call out wrongdoing. Because the wrongdoers have more power. But the real man tells the truth. Just because other people can’t stomach it, doesn’t mean that you should stop. I will decide what’s appropriate to write, not other people. I will decide what I can say or cannot, not other people. I am an independent thinker and I am the one that speaks the truth. The truth is always appropriate.
The people that follow me on LinkedIn, they do perhaps one job out of all of the jobs that I do. I write about all of my different jobs: activist, reformer, writer, poet, artist, photographer, scholar, academic, researcher, curator, and thinker. To mention just a few. No one and nothing can contain me because I have so much in me and I will not attempt to contain myself for whatever anyone else thinks.
