Lately, I notice — especially with Facebook — that I get pain in my elbow and wrist from so much mouse clicking to follow everyone’s posts. I read all my Friends’ postings, regardless of how well I know them, and I just keep reading and commenting and reading and refreshing pages. There are people in my Friends list that I’ve spent more time with on Facebook than in real life. But no matter what our relationship in real life, I find myself reading everything they post. It begins to seem as though my “best friends” are the ones who interact with me the most on Facebook. Yet that’s insidious, because it doesn’t mean they’re closer to me; it just means they’re on Facebook a lot and they like to interact with people on it. It’s seductive to sit there clicking, clicking, clicking on everyone’s content, yet I have to do something about my overuse strain. I am, after all, a sign language interpreter, and I have to save my hands and arms for work.

And speaking of seductive, it is so tempting to add all the people Facebook suggests to me as Friends– well, all the people I know, anyway. I never went and added all my friends Friends or anything crazy like that, but I did add almost all the classmates, coworkers, and friends I recognized. It got to the point where I had 378 Friends! As I started following more closely, I realized that I hadn’t even remembered some of my classmates correctly. In one case, I thought I was following a guy who was one class ahead of me until I realized that I was following his brother who was two classes behind me. He seems like a great guy, but the last straw was when he made that “tell me something you remember about me” prompt in his status message, and I realized, well, I didn’t remember anything.

Even more seductive is the ability to develop a fan base that will respond to what I post. But again, those who respond are not necessarily my friends. They are people who appreciate what I produce. They are fine people. Nothing wrong with them at all. But I have to be realistic with myself and ask myself why I need their validation, and why I’m spending time doing this when I could be doing other things that are more creative and productive. Or just spending time doing nothing at all, soaking up life and resting my wrists.

I’ve gotten overwhelmed with Flickr. I have 275 contacts right now, and I think I had even more at one point. There’s no way I can do them all justice. I tend to look at a few photos that show up on my home page, and sometimes surf from there onto other photos. I leave some comments and favorites. But I used to go crazy with it. Just as I do with Facebook now, I would view and comment on almost everything and then refresh the pages to see if there was anything else. I’m thinking about weeding my contacts list– not that I spend that much time on Flickr anymore. It’s been mostly about Facebook this past year.

And I just deleted about 250 Friends on Facebook. Many of them didn’t use their accounts much, but some of them used their accounts so much that I felt I had to remove my connection to them because I was overwhelmed by all their updates. Some of them, as I said before, weren’t even the people I thought I was following. Every single one of them was someone I spent more time with online than I ever did in real life. Yet, you know what’s sad? I now look at my Facebook home page and click Refresh because it looks so dull. But that’s real life! My real life doesn’t have that many people in it, so why should my online life be so peopled? I had Friends on Facebook from theatre, photography, interpreting, Flickr, the gay community, the deaf community, the deaf gay community, San Diego, Phoenix, Junior Theatre, the School of Creative & Performing Arts– and those are not the only communities I’ve ever made friends in! If I added all the friends I’ve ever known, my Friends list would be in the thousands.

But you know what saddened me even more? The fact that some of my friends from the past didn’t want to be my friends in the present. Sure, they added me as Friends, but they didn’t do anything with their accounts, didn’t call my cell phone when they said they would… or they didn’t add me as Friends at all. Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the past.

A lot of this struggle is about the distinction between past and present, reality and fantasy. The fantasy is that friends are forever. The reality is that friends are the people you spend time with, either in the present or the recent past, with plans to see each other again in the near future. When people aren’t doing things together, there’s less reason to remain friends. Due to the joy and pain I’ve experienced in life, I tend to want to heal my past and sooth my present with it, or reach back to my past and validate it with my present. I see the past, present, and future as a circle, and I want to mend that circle, let it be unbroken, integrate it. I want to be integrated, to have integrity.

The struggle is far from over. May we all find peace.

I took part in an interesting phenomenon today. I was riding the light rail home from work when I checked Twitter using Twidroid on my T-Mobile G1 with Google. An update suddenly appeared from Sheila Bocchine (sheilabocchine on Twitter and daisyjellybean on Flickr) that read, "I have all the necessary paperwork for my visa complete!! Yay!! Now for lunch at Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe!!"

I’ve wanted to try Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Cafe for a couple of years now, and I’ve seen it many times lately while passing it on the eastbound train on Jefferson at 8th Street. I just happened to be on Washington and 24th Street when I read her latest tweet, so I was only blocks away from the restaurant. I sent her a direct message saying, "Like company for lunch? I’m on the Metro in that direction right now! =)". I didn’t hear back right away, so I sent another, "I am at 12th st & Washington right now", and finally, "I got off the train. If now’s not a good time, I can get the next one." Luckily, I got a direct message from her as I stood on the station platform that said, "come on over!! We just ordered!" Thus we had a spontaneous Tweetup.

This is one of the things Twitter is good for. I haven’t seen Sheila in person in a long time, and I’ve never met her man Gary Millard (garymillard on Twitter and garymillard13 on Flickr). I would never have known she were going to a restaurant near me if I hadn’t read her update on Twitter. I’ve long admired Sheila for showing her photos in galleries, and I was able to pick her brain a bit about how she does that. She gave me some good pointers to follow up on. I hope I added value to her day as well. I believe that spending time with people has benefits we can’t even see at the time and sometimes do not realize until years later. And I also believe that there are values to socializing that cannot be measured, so our coming together spontaneously like this was a good thing in ways we may never know.

Have you ever participated in spontaneous meetups like this? How have you harnessed technology to enhance your social life? I’d like to hear other people’s experience with either Twitter or any other technology that has brought them together with other people.

My friend Robert, who took this photo of his daughter after a self-portrait of mine, writes:

I’ve wanted to take this pic for a long time. I saw Daniel’s pic and thought to myself “I have one of those whistles somewhere around the house.”

My daughter didn’t need any coaxing to pose for this as she’s always had a very high opinion of Dan. She’s in good company.

Wow! I’m flattered. When someone takes what you’ve created and creates something else in response, that’s interactive, co-creative art! That’s community. I love it!

P.S. I’ve met Robert and his daughter Stephanie on a few Flickrmeets and photo strolls.

Yesterday morning, I felt rather down about my lack of success in the corporate world, and I put out a call for positive strokes on Twitter and Facebook. They both said, “I’m feeling down, and I need to believe in myself today. Please tell me something you admire about me. I’ll do the same for you.” (Actually, the update on Facebook began, “Daniel is…’feeling down’” and the rest I kept in the first person.)

I really did feel the need for positive strokes, yet I also thought it would be an interesting experiment in comparing my current self-and-other presence on Twitter and Facebook. The result was that I got more responses on Facebook. This isn’t altogether surprising, since I have more friends on Facebook and it seems to be popular with a larger audience than the geek-and-early-adopter crowd on Twitter. Of course, there could be other reasons for this result that I can’t divine. Anyway, here’s what some of my supporters said:

• On Twitter:
  • “@danielgreene your photos are fantastic! I’ve always enjoyed looking through your flickr stream!”
  • “Hi daniel, I admire sense of adventure and your honesty. I hope your say has been going better for you!”
• On Facebook:
  • “I’m remembering the eyse and the flying hands when you tell a story in ASL”
  • “Your charisma brightens thf room.”
  • “Danny, I haven’t seen you in years, but the thing that I most remember about you is your generous smile!”
  • “True strength comes from within… don’t let others invalidate or validate you. Believing in yourself will only only work if you find your own reasons for admiring your own inner qualities.”
  • “Daniel you were one of the few genuine, kind and thoughtful classmate of mine at SCPA! Always had a nice thing to say with a smile!”
  • “I’m often inspired by how you see and capture the world. It’s very moving and inspiring – not just for me, but for many!”
  • “You are a smiley and positive person – hard to imagine you down. You are loved! ♥”

I am sincerely grateful for these strokes, and even for the non-stroke advice to stroke myself (that came out wrong). They’re all right, of course. Including the friend who said, so wisely, “Believing in yourself will only only work if you find your own reasons for admiring your own inner qualities.”

What continues to puzzle me as I go through life is the enthusiastic feedback I’ve received from friends and colleagues yet the continued rejection I’ve received at commercial auditions (when I was eight and again when I was 37), the fact that I was rejected by all four SAG-franchised commercial talent agencies in the Phoenix Metro area when I moved here four years ago, and the five promotions I’ve been passed over for in the past three years. It has always seemed that whatever charisma I have, and whatever makes me “a wonderful person” doesn’t translate to commercial or corporate success.

So, I’m left with these questions:

1. Why does my success with people not translate to success with businesses?
2. Is there anything about my behavior that I can change (without losing myself in the process) that will enable me to achieve the commercial success I’ve been thus far unable to attain?
3. And, in a nutshell: How do I define success?

There are people who love me in this world, and yet it’s not enough. I hate the sound of even saying that. Why is it that when I have a husband and two dogs clamoring for my attention, I am clamoring for the attention of “the world”? Why is it that when the people who love me tell me I’m great, I let “the world” make me feel small? When is it all going to be enough? When am I going to be enough? Perhaps when I feel that I am enough, and when I really “get it” that I am lovable, the commercial and corporate world will fall in line.

What do you think of all this? How do you define success?