Is Facebook causing us to disconnect from people?

August 23, 2016 by 6 Comments

You have to have a tough skin to write for a big online audience. The feedback is often as brutal as it is swift. But I don’t have a tough skin, in fact my skin is practically transparent it’s so flimsy.

But, along with my delicate (and wrinkled) skin, I have strong opinions and so I have had to learn to deal with a bit of feedback, criticism even. For the most part I am happy to learn from other people, to broaden my view or consolidate it.

But there is a big difference between a disagreement in opinion and the attack of a troll. When trolls attack I take safety in the fact they don’t know me and they surely have their own issues if they think it’s okay to attack me rather than debate with me.

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The contents of my head

May 27, 2015 by 31 Comments

contents of my brain

I think (and talk) a lot about how much of our children’s lives we should be sharing on social media and with other people. I am all for respect and boundaries. I have chosen to share carefully. Often I make mistakes.

I don’t think some “bad” person is going to steal my son’s image or but I do worry about exposing him to the world from my vantage point, without his adult consent and the understanding of all that it encompasses.
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The bazillion things I love about living my life online

January 28, 2015 by 18 Comments

You know that feeling when you have so much to say but your blog has been having a few days off at the health farm (ie getting fixed from the silly spammers that hacked it) and then when it comes back all shiny and clean, you forgot what you wanted to say? Funny that, because that’s exactly what happened to me!

The one thing I have remembered during this small hiatus that no one would have actually noticed (such is my random blogging nature) is how much I love and depend on my online life.

Even though I am not one of those diligent people that blog every day, I love my little place on the net, not so much the words on it but the community around it. I love what my blog has given me; I love the people that come to see what I’m thinking, those that hang out with me on Facebook and those who engage with me on Twitter.

I recently realised how bad I am at what the professionals would call “branding”. My blog and my Facebook page have the name Sharpest Pencil and my Instagram and Twitter have my real name, I am all over the place online much like I am in real life. But that doesn’t bother me, that’s not why I do it. Not for the brand, not for the numbers, not for the business but because I love the connections I have made.

I am absolutely shite at real life professional relationships, I am stubborn and pig-headed and I believe what I know very strongly. I’m much better working in my own space and attracting like-minded people that I can talk to as friends rather than colleagues. I am well suited to being a freelancer and consultant professionally and an avid social media fan personally because I get people like myself, I feel comfortable with my online world, I love people that I have never met.

I love the fact that last week I hosted a soiree for people that I had only met online. (Because I am a very non-professional blogger I took photos of the table settings rather than the people, but I think that speaks more about me than anything else.)

blogger soiree

I love the fact that on Monday I took a photo of a dessert that I served and it ended up on 2Day FM’s Facebook page. That’s the click and buzz of social media.

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Post by 2Day FM.

 

I love the fact that yesterday 9News used one of my tweets in an article about the great Facebook outage of 2015. That’s the power and high of talking online.

Nine News #facebookdown

I love the immediacy of the internet, the online interaction and the range of opinions and views I can learn from (or slam, because really I am already quite opinionated) . I love the fact that I can talk to Marian Keyes or Caitlin Moran or a person I’ve never met or heard of just as easily as I can speak to my friends around the corner.

I love the fact that even though I am possibly the shyest person you will ever meet I have a voice here. I love that I get to share it online with you.

 

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Is Twitter the new backyard?

January 8, 2010 by 23 Comments

I am filled with sadness every time I step out my front door.

I look to the right and there on the front porch is an empty bench.  The bench on which my neighbour Phillip, spent so many of his days.

For weeks he was looking really unwell.

And then yesterday there was a constant stream of people wearing black coming and going from the house.

I feel sad that a man that I did not really know has died.  I have been into his house only twice – once to retrieve a ball my son had kicked over and now today to offer his family my sympathies and take them a cake.
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Behind the front door of this house we never ventured into was a man, his wife and his daughter.  People who lived together, loved one another, argued, ate, celebrated and commiserated.  People who lived full and proper lives right next to ours and we never even knew them but to say hello.

There are people on Twitter that I have never met, yet my relationships with them are stronger than any relationship I had with my neighbour. If they are not on Twitter for a few days  I worry where they are, I know about their kids, and their partners or their quest for kids and partners or their pets or their love of the colour purple and their dreams to write books, their children’s habits and quirks and their own dreams (especially those involving Simon Baker).

Twitter has become my backyard and I really like it there . Always a friendly face and a hysterical tale.  The problem is that sometimes I forget to go outside and talk to the “real” people.

So now if you bump into me in the street and I greet you voraciously it’s not just because I think I recognise you from Twitter.

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