Being Seen Again: People Behind Businesses and the Birth of VastReel Personal Brand Story Videos
Hitting middle age as a Gen Xer, the last many years have been a strange, transformative mix of COVID-induced isolation, midlife perspective shifts, odd perimenopause symptoms, and a full-on reevaluation of what the next half-century could look like (my “second mountain,” for anyone who’s read The Second Mountain: A Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks, a book I read last year that mirrored what I was a craving).
At some point along this most recent stretch of my Gen X journey, I saw how I’d lost touch with many people I once knew well. With those I’d managed to stay connected to through social media, my sense of who they were and what they were about came mostly from posts, photos, and the occasional video clip. IRL get-togethers with my network had quietly been replaced by highlight reels, job announcements, and curated selfies.
COVID gave me a reason to normalize the distance technology had already created between people. I also welcomed it as a legitimate reason to stay off/tune out Facebook, stay home, skip events, and slowly trade real connection for digital ones as I waded further into my forties. Even years after the world opened back up, I kept hobbling on the digital crutches I’d lazily embraced from my home office and living room couch, still impacted by heaviness from the last few years.
Then it hit me.
As I began to wipe the crust from my eyes that had formed during hibernation, I realized how much time had passed in a flash. That the people still in my social media networks that I was considering reconnecting with via a DM – I hadn’t really laid eyes on most of these people in… a decade!? And this meant they hadn’t seen me or have much clue what I’m about as a middle-aged person in that shitload of time either. Somewhere along the way, they and I had all become a summary of our social media posts, old memories passed along, and tones reinterpreted, like that telephone whisper game we used to play as kids.
If the fragments we share on social media are the only way people know us – and in this era of AI-generated content and algorithm-curated feeds – the missing time gets filled in with stories whether we participate in them or not.
Climbing The Second Mountain Without a Crutch
Eventually, living a hermit lifestyle post-COVID served its purpose. I got perspective. I stopped drinking alcohol. I detoxed from social media. I got grounded IRL. I got clear. And I got a second wind for the second half.
I guess you could say I started climbing my second mountain in 2025. I refreshed my personal and professional visions based on what matters to me most. As I regrouped, I remembered something I love about my consulting work: connection through experiences. The conversations with smart, curious business owners and colleagues. The collaboration with fellow entrepreneurs chasing ideas that mean something to them. The sense of shared momentum that makes the work we’re doing matter.
While refreshing the Vast Interactive brand this year with a new website and reimagining my digital marketing services for the age of AI, I am responding to the pinch a lot of middle-aged business owners are feeling. In my observational research, one truth kept surfacing: in a world saturated with content, too many of us are reacting instead of connecting. We feel pressured to produce more even though we’re saying less. Posts and photos on apps ping pong off one another then blend together – much of it overzealous rather than resonant. And in all that digital noise, the human connection is lost.
Connecting Instead of Reacting | Watch My VastReel Brand Story Video
Created for entrepreneurs, business professionals, and local leaders who have lived long enough to have a story to share.
In this VastReel personal brand video, I talk about the small businesses I work with and the growth opportunities digital marketing unlocks. Get a sense of my knowledge, approach, and what I bring as a digital marketing consultant and CEO of Vast Interactive Consulting. This is me sharing what Vast Interactive Consulting does and who it’s built to serve.
Brand storytelling documentary-style videos for those who want to share their story in their own words.
It started as a way to reintroduce myself after years of connecting mostly through screens. But it’s become a thing. The VastReel: a documentary-style video storytelling style filmed on-location in Atlanta that helps people be seen again.
VastReel is my own personal answer to digital distance. A way for me to step out from behind my website and LinkedIn profile and show what I am about to my digital relationships – my voice, expression, purpose. The point of my business.
Because when people can experience our humanity instead of the fragments from a social media network, we can create connection. And in an era defined by algorithms, this style of digital storytelling can reconnect us.
