After years of avoiding Facebook like the plague, I finally took the plunge! Will this be my undoing?

Well it has been one week since I started my blog and also since I joined Facebook.  I have learned three important things:

1. Almost everything from the Ellen sitcom of the 1990s is back in style again.  That has nothing to do with my blog or Facebook, but I have been watching that show lately and it interesting that styles from the ’90s are once again so popular.  Who else is loving their soft flannel grunge tops and combat boots?
2. I am really enjoying writing this blog.  I don’t know if I have found my niche yet, and I still need to figure out how much cursing is the proper amount for this site, but otherwise this is quite thrilling!
3. Facebook is incredibly addictive.  I had to establish ground rules when I chose to ignore the tornado siren because I was reading a particularly interesting post.  It turned out to just be the monthly test siren, but I decided to impose Facebook rules to insure personal and family safety, cleanliness, and overall wellbeing.  To that end I only check my account after the children are fed and we all pass the minimal hygiene requirements established for our family.  So I am sitting on the couch with no makeup, hair un-brushed, and  a box of crackers at my side – super classy.  But I am fully clothed and my kids are at school so I can be glued to my computer all day.  Rock on!

I really had no expectations about my blog when I started writing posts.  Just the goal of getting something written was daunting enough that pushing the ‘Submit’ button was a triumph in itself.  To see that people are actually reading the blog is very flattering! At this point it is too early to speculate whether it will eventually lead to a new career or end up as just a fun hobby, but it will be a healthy way to express all the energy bottled up inside through hilarious, touching, gut wrenching, and super weird stories that are trying to burst out.  Because without a hobby of some sort, I am basically a disgruntled, overly frazzled, frumpy housewife with just enough spare time to write these super weird stories and release them into the World Wide Web to live on in infamy.  So to those of you who have been reading this past week, thanks for sticking with me.  I promise to try to get better, or worse if that helps.  You, my friends, are my motivation to keep going.

I would like to prattle a bit about Facebook, because it is incredibly fascinating!  I had no idea how much FUN it would be to reconnect with people from my past simply by creating a profile page.  I don’t know why it took so long for me to do this.  Contrary to popular belief, my husband and I are not cave dwellers and we do use technology extensively; we are just super choosy about what and how we use it.  And my husband (who is not on Facebook) is still not completely convinced that Facebook is not the work of the devil.  Actually I am also not completely convinced either, but the fact remains that I have been able to come back into contact with so many amazing people from my childhood in the course of a week.  This feat is beyond comprehension!  Maybe I am a cave dweller…Something that touched me especially was a comment from one friend who wrote in my timeline that she had thought about me frequently over the years and had looked for me on Facebook.  It made me realize that I had been missing out on the chance to maintain friendships through continual conversations on a virtual platform of goodwill and good vibes.

As I continued to find old friends and send requests out (and confirm requests too!) I was delightfully surprised by my reactions.  I found myself smiling back at the photos of old classmates, gasping to see them with new babies, exclaiming my glee over their children’s antics, their fantastic careers, my great looking grown up re-found friends!  Then I encountered a problem.  I found people who I didn’t think I could ‘friend’.  They were people with whom I had parted ways due to some sort of drama, or they were simply people who I believed wouldn’t remember or care to know me after all these years.  Why re-hash any new drama by inviting an old enemy onto my page, or possibly be turned down by someone too cool to remember me from fifteen years ago because even back then they were too cool to be my friend?

In case it hasn’t become obvious, I have always been a tad sensitive and self conscious, and making friends has not been easy for me until recently.  I never really had a clique in high school, although I did have some wonderful friends who took me in and dragged me on many wild and crazy adventures.  Instead of cementing myself into one group of people and assimilating their ways, I sort of floated all over, absorbing a bit from every clique but never really fitting in anywhere.  Perhaps that has lent to my overall balking at getting on Facebook as well as my hesitation this past week when encountering some of the classmates from my past.  As intimidating as they were back then, with their perfect grades,  Olympian athletic graces and impeccable wardrobes, they are even scarier now!  Most have gone on to become exactly what I knew they would: Titans of creativity, ingenuity, and beauty.  I never felt like I measured up to them in high school, and this crippling revelation has resurfaced  with my rediscovery of all these successful classmates and friends from days gone by.  So, I am faced with a new challenge for the next week.  I can either be a wimp and cower in shame from the people who I believe are so much better than I simply because I didn’t know that I was cool enough to hang out with them in high school.  Or I can get over myself, extend a hand of friendship and see what happens.

—G