Social Media
I am so glad that I didn't grow up with it. Social media.
It is a double edged sword. On one hand, it is fun to keep in touch with others, on the other hand, it is painfully educating. It took me a very long time to jump on the bandwagon. I felt leery of it. Plus, it seemed so insipid on so many levels. Like an endless series of cheery Christmas cards.
Here we are at Jimmy's christening. He didn't cry a tear!!!
We all made it to Dad's birthday party this year. I am holding our new golden retriever. His name is Sheldon. Yes! After Sheldon on Big Bang!! He is SO picky.
This is my new haircut. I think I'm having a mid life crisis!!! OH, NO!!!!
I admit that I find them tiresome. Especially when they are mine.
I try to read everything with a grain of salt. Especially the younger ones.
I think back to when I was 20, 25, 39, even 47. The person I was then was similar to the one I am now, but I was....well....a lot more stupid. Of course, you could NEVER have told ME that and if you did, I would have let you have it right back and thought myself superior in every way to some old fart who dared to take me on.
I honestly thought that I was a lot smarter than I truly was. I thought myself to be witty and sarcastic when actually...if one read between the lines....it would have been revealed that I was just treading water. Especially politically. The amount of research I did on politics was minuscule compared to the amount that I do now. I thought that I was mature. I wasn't. Not really. I had good intentions, but I looked at the world through mostly naive eyes. I thought there was an answer for every question. I had never really been tested or stressed to the breaking point yet. I wrote three books before I was thirty and wondered why I couldn't get them published. I read them now and instantly see why. I was not writing about things that I knew about.
If there had been a facebook or a twitter back then....the me I would have presented to the world would have been much less confused than the person that I was inside. Because, we all want to be liked. We all want to present our best, most savvy self. And to be honest, when you are young, you tend to think that the world revolves around you. As you age, you realize that you are one tiny particle in a whole sea. An important particle, but a particle. And it changes you.
I read my facebook and twitter accounts now and wonder if I were given the luck to live to be 90 if I would have looked at them and shuddered at my false bravado.
And I have learned things about people on facebook and twitter that I wish that I had not. Some people that I thought were intelligent, are actually....welll.....not. I have one in mind that will go unnamed, but I was astounded at all the reprints it had....of Russian origin. This person had not even bothered to research what he/she reprinted and sent out to the world. I found this reprehensible. And I felt embarrassed for them. Until I realized that most of their readers didn't care. As long as it jived with what they believed, the remarks could have originated with Satan. I realized a terrible truth: my world was filled with those who were uneducated and proud of it.
So, I have been considering shutting down everything. Do people truly want to know what book I am reading? Or that I attended a graduation? Do they really care? And it takes such a huge chunk of a day that can be so much better spent on reading and sitting outside and watching my birds. Writing. No one will miss my words any more than I miss theirs.
And maybe, we will take up the art of conversation again.
It is a double edged sword. On one hand, it is fun to keep in touch with others, on the other hand, it is painfully educating. It took me a very long time to jump on the bandwagon. I felt leery of it. Plus, it seemed so insipid on so many levels. Like an endless series of cheery Christmas cards.
Here we are at Jimmy's christening. He didn't cry a tear!!!
We all made it to Dad's birthday party this year. I am holding our new golden retriever. His name is Sheldon. Yes! After Sheldon on Big Bang!! He is SO picky.
This is my new haircut. I think I'm having a mid life crisis!!! OH, NO!!!!
I admit that I find them tiresome. Especially when they are mine.
I try to read everything with a grain of salt. Especially the younger ones.
I think back to when I was 20, 25, 39, even 47. The person I was then was similar to the one I am now, but I was....well....a lot more stupid. Of course, you could NEVER have told ME that and if you did, I would have let you have it right back and thought myself superior in every way to some old fart who dared to take me on.
I honestly thought that I was a lot smarter than I truly was. I thought myself to be witty and sarcastic when actually...if one read between the lines....it would have been revealed that I was just treading water. Especially politically. The amount of research I did on politics was minuscule compared to the amount that I do now. I thought that I was mature. I wasn't. Not really. I had good intentions, but I looked at the world through mostly naive eyes. I thought there was an answer for every question. I had never really been tested or stressed to the breaking point yet. I wrote three books before I was thirty and wondered why I couldn't get them published. I read them now and instantly see why. I was not writing about things that I knew about.
If there had been a facebook or a twitter back then....the me I would have presented to the world would have been much less confused than the person that I was inside. Because, we all want to be liked. We all want to present our best, most savvy self. And to be honest, when you are young, you tend to think that the world revolves around you. As you age, you realize that you are one tiny particle in a whole sea. An important particle, but a particle. And it changes you.
I read my facebook and twitter accounts now and wonder if I were given the luck to live to be 90 if I would have looked at them and shuddered at my false bravado.
And I have learned things about people on facebook and twitter that I wish that I had not. Some people that I thought were intelligent, are actually....welll.....not. I have one in mind that will go unnamed, but I was astounded at all the reprints it had....of Russian origin. This person had not even bothered to research what he/she reprinted and sent out to the world. I found this reprehensible. And I felt embarrassed for them. Until I realized that most of their readers didn't care. As long as it jived with what they believed, the remarks could have originated with Satan. I realized a terrible truth: my world was filled with those who were uneducated and proud of it.
So, I have been considering shutting down everything. Do people truly want to know what book I am reading? Or that I attended a graduation? Do they really care? And it takes such a huge chunk of a day that can be so much better spent on reading and sitting outside and watching my birds. Writing. No one will miss my words any more than I miss theirs.
And maybe, we will take up the art of conversation again.
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