Google Knows You Twice

Google any name. Not a celebrity. Not a tech influencer. Just a regular person. A colleague, an old classmate, someone you vaguely remember from somewhere.

What you'll find is almost always the same two things: a LinkedIn profile (or XING, if you're in Germany) and an obituary.

That's it. That's the entire digital footprint of most people. Two moments: "I'm looking for work" and "I'm gone." The career platform and the death notice. The beginning of productivity and the end of productivity.

Between those two entries, decades of life. Thoughts, opinions, stupid jokes, hard-won lessons, things built, things broken, arguments at 2am, moments of clarity in the shower. None of it visible. None of it indexed. The internet, supposedly the great archive of human experience, knows most people only as a workforce unit and a funeral announcement.

The silent middle

I find this genuinely fascinating. And a little absurd.

We live in an era where publishing is free. Where anyone can put a thought out into the world without asking for permission. And yet the vast majority of people remain invisible between their two Google results. Not because they have nothing to say, but because saying things publicly still feels like it's reserved for a certain type of person. The type with a podcast. The type who says "let's unpack that."

But here's the thing: that middle space, the messy, unfinished, in-progress space between your career profile and your obituary, is where all the interesting stuff actually happens. It's where you figure things out. Where you change your mind. Where you build something nobody asked for at 2am on a Saturday because you couldn't stop thinking about it.

Filling the gap

I started this blog not because of some grand content strategy. I started because I realized I was on track to be another two-result person. A LinkedIn page that says what I do, and eventually, a page that says I stopped doing it.

That felt like a shame.

So this blog is the middle part. It's not polished thought leadership. It's not optimized for SEO. It's just what I'm actually thinking about and working on, put into words, put on the internet, existing somewhere between the resume and the obituary.