damn love/hate feelings messing with me

Although I’m pretty submerged in social media like blogging, message boards, Facebook, Twitter, it still scares the shit out of me most days. On one hand I love it all, but on the other hand I hate it. Especially Twitter and Facebook. I just hate feeling like the freaking outcast I was back in high school.

 

I admit that being immediately up-to-date about pretty much anything anywhere is pretty awesome. But I just don't dig the cliques. Still, I haven't given it up. Instead, I just do what I did back in high school—I withdraw. And then I get pissed at myself because I lived so much of my life on the sidelines and I just can’t do it anymore. So I don’t withdraw completely like I did back then; instead, I take a step back when things become too annoying for me and then jump back in when I'm ready. (I guess that's me just being a Big Girl.)

I concede that feeling like an outcast is of my own doing. I’m just not an outgoing person and I tend to back off when things get too intense. I’m just not passionate enough about my own ideas and beliefs, I guess. Unless it’s about my Lovie, of course.

The funny thing is that without social media, I’d never have met my husband who answered a personal ad I placed on Yahoo Personals in 2000. (Thank God for the Internet may or may not have been the theme to our wedding. No, I'm kidding; we're not that dorky.)

Seriously, there are a ton of great things about social media. I can't dispute that. I mean, through years and years of blogging and trolling posting on message boards, I’ve made some fantastic real life friends. Hell, without social media, I wouldn’t really have a social life at all.

So what’s my hang-up then?

It scares me.

 

There’s so much info out there available in a millisecond. I’m terrified for my child’s future. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be alive today had Facebook been available back in the late 80s when I went to high school. I’m pretty damn certain of it, actually. After all, “If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all" is completely non-existent today thanks to social media.

But as much as this frustrates me at times, I can’t log off, I can't delete my accounts.

 

I’ve backed down on participating with a lot of it, yes, but I can’t give it up completely. Because the truth of the matter is that without it, I’d be so lonely: I wouldn’t have met my husband who gave me my incredible Lovie; I wouldn’t have made some of the best friends a girl could have; I wouldn’t be able to find out that my nephew who’s struggled most of his life because of shitty parenting just got a new position as Assistant Manager; I wouldn’t be able to know that my best friend in the whole world is going through some horrifically scary times during her early pregnancy.

 

I do think the good outweighs the bad when it comes to social media, but it doesn’t mean I can’t be leery of it all and worry for my child’s future.

Fortunately, that guy I met and married through an online personal ad? He's a computer guru who will be able to keep tabs on Lovie’s online interactions so hopefully that will ease my worry a bit when she’s 30 and able to finally date and use the interwebz.