A while ago I heard about a service that would type out your tweets (on a typewriter) and mail them to you. At first glance it seems like a kitchy fad, but lately I’ve pondered how this translates to other social media. Bloggers have been doing it for a while; most blogs are essentially public diaries anyway. But what about Facebook? Imagine one year of your life in Facebook; your statues, pictures, wall-posts, etc. Printed out and bound together, it would be like your own personal scrapbook and diary wrapped up together. So the question is, what would your year in Facebook say about you?
I imagine mine would be a fair distribution of comments about music, books, and events. (By events I mean get-togethers with friends, birthdays, or silly things my kids have done, or silly things that I’ve done, and of course, concerts.) I know I do my fair share of complaining, but I hope not too much.
With all my thoughts about what my Facebook status says about me as a person, yesterday was one of those days when I didn’t know what my status was. I erred on the side of no status update. (And I’m using this as my day late, dollar short forum instead.)
On the one hand, I was flooded with memories of where I was nine years ago on September 11. It was second period, my most well-behaved class. My coworker Jerry knocked on my door and pulled me out into the hall. “Do you know what happened?” he asked. I expected some school gossip. Instead he said, “We’ve been attacked.” During planning the next period, when the kids were off at PE, we watched the news in the library. We called loved ones. And then we went back to teach and act normal for the rest of the day- we’d been instructed not to turn on the tvs or talk about it in the classroom.
On the other hand, yesterday was a fantastic day for college football. Several pairs of highly ranked teams played each other, and my Gators managed to pull out another win, thank you very much. (Here’s hoping I get to say that next week, too.) My kids had fun at a friend’s birthday party, too. What could beat jumping into a foam pit and ice-cream cake? It was an all-around, great fall Saturday.
I couldn’t condense my thoughts into a few hundred characters yesterday, but I think it’s really cool that we have these forums that allow us to try. It’s important to remember, but it’s equally important to be thankful for our blessings today, for the great time and place in which we live.
