Mouthing off

So I haven’t posted anything on Boys Wear Pants in over a month now, even though it was an awesome short story that would make your grandmother blush!

I’m just like you guys–concerned about where my employment situation is going to be in a year, worrying about keeping my kids safe and committed to improving themselves so their country will look, feel and smell better than the one we’re living in now. And to come down out of the clouds for a moment, I’ve simply been channeling my writing efforts in another direction.

I just finished a short story about ice harvesting in Decatur, Illinois in the 1890s–sounds thrilling I know but there is a pretty grisly murder than I approached from a literary and poetic expression that is difficult to achieve in the short fiction format. My intention is to write a book of loosely interconnected short stories that tell the story of the city of Decatur, Illinios through the various characters and mysteries that walked its streets and dreamed its dreams for almost 200 years now. Decatur claims to be one of the most haunted cities in America but more significantly for myself, it’s where I grew up from age one until I was 12 and moved to Ohio.

But I can’t claim artistic integrity and career fretting as the primary reasons for my lack of publishment on this site famous only to myself and a few brilliant others. A new mistress has moved into my writing boudoir–Facebook. I currently have 187 friends which are actually people I know and spending less than 30 minutes a day, I can keep up with all of them.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s great book The Tipping Point, he talks about “The 150 Rule” where sociologically in our past, we are each able to maintain 150 quality social connections before our loyalties and attention begins breaking down into tribal units which ultimately are pitted against each other in a battle for space and resources.  And 150 quality social connections doesn’t mean knowing 150 people because you have to account for the relationship between people in your network. So if I know Jack and Susie, not only am I managing my individual relationships with each of them but I have influence over their relationship with each other. Doing the final math reduces the final number of quality social connections to the best handicap a midwestern golfer could hope for on 18 holes at a public course.

But Web 2.0 has changed all of that, turned it on its head and kicked gravel in its face. Today, I can spend less than 30 minutes a day on Facebook (my primary social networking tool), LinkedIn (my professional social networking tool), Twitter (I still haven’t figured out how to incorporate micro-blogging into my networking efforts because I do so much of this with my Facebook update status that it feels like redundancy) and this blog you’re reading now.

These different solutions have different rules that I’ve imposed. I may connect with people on LinkedIn that I wouldn’t accept as friends on Facebook. Facebook is the place where you hook up with people from your past and present, people you don’t mind seeing pictures of your kids or hearing your thoughts on your cat eating earwax out of used q-tips in your trash can (TMI I know but an recent Facebook update of mine nonetheless). And LinkedIn is the place you keep up with people you’ve dealt with professionally–people who are going to ask for your help in their career and who should be there for you when you need a recommendation or an introduction to an employment opportunity.

Twitter has been great for keeping up with my local and national news as well as a choice few individuals who excel at blogging consistently and interestingly in 150 characters or less. But again, this is so much like Facebook updates to me that I haven’t figured out how to connect the two and make them both work for me. And then there’s this blog. I like to try and publish weekly (on Sundays usually the day I spend enjoying time with my family and tend to be in a more creative and reflective mood–the expression of which is the tone and purpose of this blog in the first place).

So there’s a disconnect that has to be ironed out but I’m working on it and still love you guys who come back regularly to smell what the WordSlinger is cooking up. But on the plus side, I’ve got my mom and grandmother on Facebook now to help me figure it all out.
Creative Commons License photo credit: borrowed time | demi-brooke

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