“Hi, My Name is Right Brain”

I confess myself to be a selfish user of social media. I put things there (at least I do when I travel, or when I write) but I don’t read there. The thing is, I’d generally rather read a book.

At its best, social media should be an exchange of interest. At its best, it should be like exchanging letters, with the ability to write to and read about multiple friends at once. But it doesn’t feel to me like letters (I’m certain of this, as a person who still writes and mails some actual letters), and the crass commercialism of the ads and the preponderance of impersonal memes and the addition of videos and content from people I don’t know… Well, all of that repels me, honestly. (I say that with renewed vigor, having just taken a guilt-induced stroll through Facebook. Nope.)

Did I mention? I’d rather spend my finite time with a book in my hand.

So I allow my writing to post in various places, and I cheerfully, gratefully interact with those who read and respond to it. And honestly? I’ve never gotten over being surprised that people DO read and respond to it. I created the blog simply as a test-run, to play around and get familiar with WordPress before I bid on a freelance job that required familiarity with it. I grinned when my mom and my husband followed it, and thought it might function like a family letter-box… And then a handful more followers showed up. I didn’t understand where they’d come from! And then there were 18. And then there were 72. I watched the numbers with fascination and enjoyment (I like numbers), and when I had 3,000 followers and lively conversations in the “comments” section, it did become a place for two-way (or ten-way) sharing.

After my husband’s death, I didn’t write for two solid years. Didn’t write here, didn’t write journals, didn’t write, period. Numbers of followers dropped in my absence, and (more sadly) my community of comment-conversation lost most of its lively element. In the years since my remarriage, I’ve written and not-written with a sort of tidal ebb-and-flow, not the thrice-weekly consistency of my earlier blogging-years.

At heart, I’m always still writing to the “audience” of my husband and my mother. (A different husband, now. But still.) When the writing-tides bring a response washing up on my blog-beachhead, it’s all the more welcome for not being looked-for. All the more powerful, sometimes… such as (I’ll keep running with my metaphor) yesterday’s colorful shell on the sand: a cheery and cheering comment posted anonymously but signed “Left Brain.”

My very first day of 5th grade in a new town, I sat by myself on a recess bench, and Jenny approached me with a poll: Did I like Michael Jackson? I said out that I was new, and I didn’t know anyone yet, and which one of our classmates was Mike? From that ignominious start followed years of inseparable friendship. Girl Scouts and Sunday School and summer camp and sleepovers and phone calls and note-passing and secret codes and shared crushes and shared clothes and shared books and walking to school together and Bon Jovi tapes and… See? This is what I would wish social media to do for me. We don’t talk much these days, but I’ve been smiling and nostalgia-ing since Jenny left that comment.

If I could redesign FaceBook, I’d make it possible to screen out the memes and the chain-letters and the cat-videos and the copy-and-pasted diatribes with guilt-driven urgings to copy and post… and just show my friends’ original content. I have no need to see any more cats jumping at cucumbers, or Princess Catherine curtseying to the king, or whatever inane video-clip will show up the next time I open Facebook.

But that, I think, is enough grumpy-old-man attitude from me today. My book is calling.