A Beginning

     Thought about doing this for awhile.  Or is it a while?  I think it's awhile.  Anyway, I decided to go ahead and try this.  If you choose to read this, let me lay down a couple of rules.  The subjects will be completely random and the language may get coarse at times.  It depends how cross I am when I write.  Apologies to the squeamish. 

     A brief bio: I am 38 years old.  I am a news photographer by occupation.  I am married with one child, another on the way.  I like movies, sports, and writing.  Work often interferes with the last one.

     With that out of the way, here we go.

     I have been resistant to social media for a long time.  Myspace came into being and I heard quite a bit about the site from others at work.  People would have their pages up to show me and I wasn't that impressed. I didn't see what the point was.  To me, it looked like drunken college pictures and short communications with other people.  Was email not good enough?  This something that kids did nowadays.  Middle schoolers did Myspace is what I had decided.  Afterall, I was 31 years old. 
     Then Facebook popped up.  "What's that?", I asked. 
     "It's like Myspace", was the reply.
     "Huh?", I said. 
     "Do you have a Myspace page?"
     "No, I'm not a fourteen year old girl", I responded.
     "Well, everybody has one", said the other person.
     "Everybody in the eighth grade", I said, getting slightly irritated.  "Why is it different from Myspace?".
    Some explanation was given to me and I never set up a page.  Shortly, the rest of America got one.  I resisted.  An old friend of mine sent me an email inviting me to join Facebook.  I clicked over to the facebook.com and stared at it.  Naw, not doing it.  I felt it was a tool of a narcicist.  I am relatively introverted and generally don't draw much attention, which would make me a great super villain.  Weeks and months went by and I bit the Facebook bullet.  I don't know how many "friends" I have and I never made it a point to have hundreds.  I don't know hundreds of people and the fact that there are no prizes for having a ton of friends, I'm okay.  It is nice to see what old friends are up to.  It seems to have reduced the need for high school reunions.  I glance at my Facebook page once, twice a week.  When my daughter was born, I had to feed her and not be on the computer so much.  Dad stuff.  Now companies want me to check them out on Facebook.  It's become a handy marketing tool I assume companies use to see how many people know they exist.  Doritos, I know what you are.  I know where I can obtain you.  I am not going to "Like" you on Facebook (please bring the Four Cheese flavor back). 
     Some time later, in the Dallas, TX newsroom I call "where I work", a reporter brought up in a meeting that there is some thing called Twitter that is like Facebook, but more immediate.  Instead of writing a message on your Facebook wall, you write it on Twitter.  But, you can only use 140 characters.  I furrowed my brow and sipped my coffee and had an internal dialogue.
     "What practical purpose do Tweets serve?"
     "I'm not sure.  But the reporter says Jay-Z is on it."
     "Hmmm, he still hasn't friended me on Facebook yet."
     "Should we do it?"
     "No!"
     Twitter has become rather popular.  As I thought, celebrities use it to tell everyone practically nothing.  Athletes use it to say dumb things.  Apologies are usually tweeted afterwards.  Twitter does have a practical use.  News reporters use it because local governments will send tweets out if there is vital information that needs to be passed on.  I drank the Twitter Kool-Aid sometime last year.  I use it to follow comedians I like and news.  That's about it.  I think I have four followers.  I don't tweet much, don't have anything vital to say. 
     So now I have started a blog.  The final phase of accepting social media.  I still bristle a bit when I hear the term 'social media'.  As I said, I am a bit introverted and I guess writing about stuff on a blog is odd.  More of that later perhaps.
     It's 1:41 am as of the time of this writing.  Time for sleep.  Not sure who will read this and I guess you can leave comments.  I might read them, but in case, respectability will be met with respectability, insolence will be met with insolence. 

P.S. -Watching America's Best Sandwich is not a good idea after a workout.