I am ambivalent about social media. Makes sense. I haven’t grown up with cell phone in my ear and texting my every thought. I didn’t have a PC on my desk in my first bunch of jobs either. YIKES! The quote from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe explains a lot about my mixed feelings about this new media world.
“Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” — Douglas Adams
Posting on a wall or tweeting out in space feels like that to me. Like I am tossing something into space in the hope that someone will hear it. Sort of like my favorite Dr Suess’s Who down in Whoville shouting “we are here”. No human communication or dialogue but just a voice in the void.
At the same time, I can see, because frankly it is pretty much as plain as day, that ‘out there’ in that void is anything but an empty space. It is full of people searching, some of them potential clients who are looking for someone like me.
I need to be there and it needs to be in a way that connects the right potential client with the right service provider – me. I need to learn this new language.
In a conversation with a peer earlier today, I said that my generation has a role to play in helping the 20 & 30 somethings to experience the powerful energy dynamics of face to face conversation. You exchange posts for decades and not experience the energy of a true two-party interaction. And, they have a role to play in my life – to show me how to genuinely connect and feel connected to this new kind of conversational energy. It is not better or worse just different.
So here I sit, writing another blog post while Miss Kitty walks back and forth in front of me occasionally adding her 2 cents to the post and wondering – does anyone hear me? I am here!