Facebook: When in doubt, shout it out

Okay, it’s a great platform for organizing your family and friends into groups, reconnecting with those with whom you lost contact forever ago, and generally connecting with like-minded friendly cohorts, but Facebook is also a great place to confront your preconceptions and learn some new ways of looking at life, love, perceptions, and maybe even discovering just exactly what really makes you happy. Stranger things have happened.

I get a great deal of pleasure from finding Facebook friends from across the globe and finding threads of commonality among all those who connect. It’s easy enough to get affirmation from those in your culture, age group, and with similar social/political leanings, but why not see just how little separates you from those who are as dissimilar as possible along several spectrums, but extraordinary examples of humanity struggling with issues that may be different but remarkably similar overall. Embrace the human race, we’re all in it together…

Blogs for the Seriously Introverted

I always have the feeling that the key for most early bloggers is learning the art of letting go, letting it flow, doing the same kind of things you would do in person. For those of us more *socially challenged*, of course, nothing could be more scary. Why go to the asynchronous expression form to be the way you always are (shy, introverted, reticent, retrospective, …), when what you really want is to release the inner extrovert that has such a difficult time escaping when you are around those who know you as recluse. Filtering the negative doomsayers among your contacts reduces your statistical conquests, but builds more positive outlook and karma, simultaneously maintaining the correct level of trust and ethics.

Thus here it is. Though occasionally too unrestrained in declaring friends you don’t know and conversing via the safe social media format, you nonetheless rediscover a revitalized freedom to express idealistic thoughts that you carefully tucked away decades before. Twittering for the spontaneous shout-out to those stalwart enough to withstand your liberal-conservative mood swings, blogging for more introspective (and wordy) mental traffic. For now at least, good enough.

Just another stake in the webspace desert...

Trekking across the dunes, on the lookout for cool oases or other places suitable for temporary respite...