Tuesday, December 13, 2011
What am I supposed to write about, honestly I don't know.
Trying out Ommwriter for the first time and it's supposed to help me not get distracted and not go on Facebook or Twitter or blogs or wherever else on the Internet. I have just (temporarily) deactivated my Facebook and Twitter last night and while it is the best decision I have done in a while, it's been tough to push away the thoughts of posting an update on Twitter or checking the news feed on Facebook. O social media, how you have ruined my life.
While I was laying in bed last night, it hit me again how social media is so deeply rooted in our lives now. Even now, I am experiencing the brunt of withdrawing from the social media scene. It's almost hard to imagine a time before Facebook and Twitter got popular, but it's good to know that those days did exist. I tried to think about what I used to do online before Facebook and Twitter entwined themselves in our lives and a few things came to my mind.
One of them was blogging. It is sad how our attention span has shortened by so much. I guess I'm pretty glad for this program because it does help writing and it does help to try and build back our capacity to concentrate. I really do love reading blogs, love reading what people write despite the grammatical errors and whatnot. When you think about it, I suppose Facebook and Twitter are just lazier versions of blogs. When you write a blog post, you are actually partaking in writing. Blogging requires much more effort because it encompasses writing (way more than the 140 characters allowed on Twitter) and photography (much more effort is required in posting photos on blogs than on Facebook).
Blog entries are seamless stories; but Facebook and Twitter updates are just fragments of thoughts we spew out at random times of the day. Sure, photos of events are posted on Facebook, but it's just not the same, you know? It's just not the same.
The mid-semester break is drawing nearer and I really do need this break. Over the past 2 weeks it almost seems like I have all but run out of steam.
I really miss the days of pre-Facebook/Twitter. Call me overly nostalgic or whatever, but I do. In those days we took to texting and MSN to talk to our friends. These days, hardly anyone uses MSN anymore and I don't know why. I stopped using it as often because other people don't use it as much anymore and also because it's not as easy to use on a MacBook. It fazes me how I could go on texting for a whole day in the past, how the topics never seemed to dry up like a dead stream – that isn't the way anymore. Texting is now somewhat of a hassle, I don't text people for very long unless I really want to. Texting with your phone under the table was an acquired skill too :-)
Also miss how people used to transfer files from one phone to the other via Bluetooth. Sigh, the days before 3G data plans....
I have so much to say but most of it cannot be said aloud. I am ashamed, too ashamed. This too shall pass this too shall pass this too shall pass.
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