I've joined Twitter, feel free to follow me. Between email, texting, Facebook, Blogging, and twitter I spend a lot of time trying to think about what to say. And then I start to wonder... do I really have that much of value to say that I need 4-5 outlets? Each outlet serves a different purpose though and connects me differently. Texting is my favorite way to communicate with my beloved sister (other than in person). Our schedules rarely mirror each other and so we don't see each other or get to talk quite as often as I'd like. I had to update my monthly text allotment, simply to be able to communicate as often as I wanted. We text about ... everything. From the inane (like the current conversation consisting of how to avoid the evil swine flu that is "lurking" according to a recent news report) to the deep.
Facebook is a double-edged sword. I'm thrilled to be able to stay in touch with people like never before. I'm excited to have found people from past lives that I thought I'd never see again. The downside (well, beside those people that I'd rather have left in the past) is that it's quite impersonal at times in the sense that what I say has the potential of reaching all 350 on my friends list (yes, I'm THAT popular). It provides a means of sharing in my friend's lives in no way like it. Just today I was able to see pictures of one of my dear Nashville friends that reminded me of how much I miss her, and allows me to not lose touch. Besides, how else would I know what Hogwarts House the Sorting Hat would have put my friends in if I didn't have FB?
Email is our oldest of all these forms of communicating an sometimes get tossed aside for the easier means of communicating. Rather than receive emails, I get texts, posts on my wall or even messages within FB. It still works well for certain things though. My friend is spending the summer in Scotland (I won't get in to how deep the jealousy goes) and since we can't talk daily as we used to, we have gotten quite proficient at updating each other via email. It is the most personal of all these forms of communicating.
Blogging is a means of keeping people up to date on my life. One problem I have is that some of the things that I want to blog about shouldn't really be for public consumption. Eithr I'm upset at someone that might potentially read the blog, or I might offend people. I do enjoy it as an outlet though and should use it more often. Facebook updates and twitter have taken the place of blogging for me. The downside to that is that those are done in snippets without a lot of thought or explanation -- the blog post would then have the full story.
Twitter is my newest way of avoiding things that I need to do. I have this friend, we've been friends since high school. She's a dear friend of the family but I don't always see her or if I do it's a short "hi, how are you" before chaos ensues around us. Twitter has given me a means of connecting with her and following her passionate desire to protect this country from what's goin on around us. Without Twitter I don't know if I would have reconnected with her so well. Oh, and we talk about Twilight too.
Lest we forget the original form of communicating, I also write letters from time to time.
4 comments:
You may ALWAYS use any mean of communcation you like for talking to me sis.....except of course twitter...and fb....I'm not on those.
Nobody has that much to say, really. Unless you're curing cancer, but then you're probably too busy to update your online status. I'm really not that much in favor of these social-networking trends. I used to write long, personal emails to my friends, but it took so much energy that these days I rarely find the time to do it. Now I pretty much just text or IM. At least that's one-on-one. I've resisted Facebook as much as I can (although I do have an account). Seems to me I'm not really interacting with these people I've friended; we're just chatting with each other's computer. I never have to put forth any effort. It's like I can take all my old friends' lives down off the shelf and look at them when I want, and when I'm done I can put them back where I found them, but I'm not really impacting anyone, nor they me. Maybe I'm doing it wrong. I draw the line at Twitter, where people just kind of talk out loud in little snippets at the Internet to see if anyone's listening. I've thought about getting an account and Tweeting about the most mindless thing I could think of (like what socks I wear each day (they're all white)) just to see if I could get anyone to follow it. I probably could. I do like blogs, but, as I found out when I tried to make one, those take way more energy than emails, and I don't really have that much to say anyway.
Yeah! You came back!
funny how many ways there are to keep track of people these days...
I this post Lol :-) Something to think about :-)
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