Facebook, X, Telegram, Truth, Youtube and the list goes on. I lurk on many and participate in a few. Facebook bothers me, I will be honest. The digital world has grown beyond what ANYONE can grasp. And the hands that can manipulate it, and do manipulate it, are unknown but suspected.
I like Facebook in the way I can jump on (rarely) to see how my family is doing. Sometimes quicker and more illustrative than a call. And sometimes it helps us seek old friends.
I used to like to post on it, until I realized that, by doing so, I was opening up my world to the views of anyone. Do I want that? I’ve nothing to hide. But I also have no need to drag folks behind me as I travel the country in the RV, or fly my airplane, or cruise the Caribbean. Or, frankly, scratch my butt. I just don’t need or want that.
Had an acquaintance, back when I was active on FB, say that he considered me to be one of the most interesting people he knew. I posted a lot. I was a bit honored, then I thought, why? I don’t want to be interesting.
I like being interested….oh yea. That is fun.
So many seem to post on FB, and other newer platforms (they say FB is now for “old farts”) to show the world, “Look at me, ain’t it great what I do?” I used to read them and feel like I was falling behind. I’d just gotten up from from my desk, designing another home, and someone is posting the family zip lining through the jungle. Did it make me feel great – not really.
We live our lives. And we see our lives “behind the scenes”. The slow periods. The boredom. And the excitement, for sure. However, we tend to express our lives, through Social Media, as the “best of”. Posts are like movie previews. “In a world…….. 🙂
I think life is big enough that living it is plenty. Showing off, good or bad, is not really part of it.
I’ve heard it suggested that a digital filter has been devised through which we now look, read, watch, buy and just about everything. Waning are “real” things.
Don’t know. Guess one could ask, “What’s real?”
But I kind of know.
So I mostly do not partake a whole lot in Social Media. I do some – but mostly throttled back to business stuff, and that is all.
But I do like my website. And that is the old fashioned part of me.
I don’t think people read it. And I doubt many will as time rolls on. Browsing others’ websites just ain’t the thing today. It’s just too slow. Doesn’t mold to the Tic-Tob brevity that is now built into everything from browsing to the jump cut videos that are so popular. Everything delivered fast, faster and fastest. What does that do to us?
But my website, to me at least, is an electronic journal. Its a diary, of sorts, tucked away in the corner of the web – mostly for me.
And should it be of value, someday, to someone who has decided to take the time to see what that old, perhaps dead, Ken Risley was about, well here it is.
I often wish I could find something of this done by my father, or mother, or my own grandma and Uncle Pete, and others. There are times, quiet time, when you just feel like looking into the minds and hearts of others, especially those related in some way. What did the world look like like to them? Who were they?
So, old fashioned or not, I have my little website. I don’t seem to post often, but will likely keep it up and will put some of my stuff on it to share. And though it will be overlooked in the noise of it all (like the little clover in the forest of Social Media redwoods) – maybe it will be found an seen someday by one or two folks.
Perhaps by one I never have met, like a great-great grandchild. Who knows?
Or, maybe, no one. ……………..that is okay too.
But to him or her, I say “Hi”. Would love to have met you. Perhaps, through this window, you can kind of meet me. At least a wee little bit…..
I, too, lived. And spent time figuring out the world, and who I am, and strived to pave a better way and leave some kind of trace of my own existence.
And though we undoubtedly differ in ways, in other, we will be found to be the same.
So my website remains.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I understand your view. We are each complex. The interior of our lives, the “behind the scenes”, as you say, is so nuanced as to be nearly impossible to effectively communicate to another. Upon my own path, I have kept audio journals going back to 2003. Microcassettes until the end of 2005, digital after that. At this point, I have 21 years and probably several hundreds of hours (if not well over a 1,000) of recordings covering my personal thoughts across nearly every day from 21 years old until the present day. Other than flying, it’s my longest running “hobby” up to this point. I’ll do it until the end. The end result will be thousands of recorded hours of the most intimate, mundane, and everything in between of what it was truly like to be “Bryan”. But, I do it for me and for no one else at this point. Having no children of my own, no one of my own blood will likely ever care to listen to them. As long as I am alive, I plan to keep them private (unless specifically vetted first). But, short of a devastating physical event, they will exist long beyond my time. It is my intention to preserve them in some durable way before I depart. Similar to your view here, in some small way, perhaps those recordings will be ‘my’ way to connect with someone well into the future, but perhaps in a more personal way, simply a way to keep a part of me here (ultimately, my life’s story) against the inevitable fact that I cannot stay forever.