The UPS truck delivered something today that brought tears to my eyes: my own hardcover copy of the book Sexting including an chapter by lil’ ol’ me. Gale Cengage Learning approached me a year ago about including a blog post of mine, Sexting highlights society’s issues with privacy and shame, in one of their their textbooks. I agreed to publication with a writer’s fee and copy of the book. They complied with a check and a copy of the book as promised. My article appears as chapter two titled “The Threat of Sexting Has Been Exaggerated” on page 15 of the hardcover edition. The book is part of the At Issue: Social Issues series.

Here is the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Sexting / Stefan Kiesbye, book editor.
p. cm. — (At issue)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7377-5161-1 (hardcover) — ISBN 978-0-7377-5162-8 (pbk.)
1. Internet and teenagers. 2. Internet–Safety measures. 3. Teenagers–Sexual relations. 4. Electronic mail systems. I. Kiesbye, Stephan. II. Title. III. Series.
HQ799.2.I5.S49 2011
004.67’80835–dc22

I am excited to be a part of this compilation and I look forward to reading the other chapters!

If you would like to circle me on Google+, search for Daniel Greene or go to my Google profile.

However, I’m not down on social media; I guess you could say I’m “down with it.” I’m just making some changes to the way I use it. Here they are:

Flickr

I once said I felt chained to Flickr. Well, I certainly don’t feel that way anymore. Coincidentally, I also haven’t had a photo in Explore in over a year. What I have realized, although I suspected it before, is that Explore is really just a popularity contest. It has nothing to do with the quality of your photos (though it may have something to do with the quality of your photos); it’s really generated by how many times you comment and fave other Flickrites’ photos and therefore how many people comment and fave your photos– and how quickly. If you don’t spend much time on Flickr looking at other people’s photos and commenting and faving them, others are not likely to spend much time reciprocating. I know that the photos I take now are just as good as the ones I used to take–if not better–but all I do anymore is post a photo or set of photos, and when I have time force myself to comment and fave other people’s photos so as to do unto others as I would have others do unto me. If I add photos to a group, I will view some other photos in that group and comment and fave the ones I like. If I admin a group, I will look through the group and thank a few members for sharing certain photos.

I’m not disingenuous— I only comment, fave, and thank if I really like the photos, but I must admit it often feels like an obligation, because I barely have enough time to share photos on Flickr anymore much less look at others. My conscience tells me, though, that if everyone who posted photos to Flickr never looked at anyone else’s, Flickr would be all artists and no appreciators. Yet even that’s not entirely true, because there are plenty of “lurking” Flickr members and plenty of nonmembers who view Flickr photos— they don’t produce; they just consume.

Once in a while, a friend of mine on Facebook will post some photos to Flickr, I will see the link to those photos, and I will go and have a look. Sometimes this is just to be reciprocal, but usually it’s because I’m genuinely interested in the photos. If I’m really not interested, I don’t look. Also, I almost never post photos to Flickr “friends only” or “friends and family only” because all my friends and family are on Facebook now, which leads me to the next social media channel…

Facebook

I’ve said before that, for me, Flickr was for photographers and Facebook was for friends. In the past year, this has become slightly less true. I still love the way Flickr puts geotagged photos on the map and shows the keywords you assign your photos as searchable tags, but I’ve become less interested in EXIF data, since by now I know what ISO, aperture, and shutter speed are required to make certain photos. And Facebook now shows photos in high resolution, which makes the quality of the images just about as good as the viewing quality on Flickr. I also have more photographer friends on Facebook now who have expanded their artistic photo sharing from Flickr to Facebook , especially when they have Facebook Pages.

Facebook Pages

As you may remember, I resisted Facebook Pages for a while until I decided to get a Facebook Page of my own. Several photographers I know also have Facebook Pages, and I “Like” their Pages so I can see the photographs they’re sharing and how they use their Pages to promote their work. Facebook also just upgraded Pages so that Page owners can browse Facebook with their Page accounts and Like or Comment other Page owners’ content, which is another way not only to reciprocate but promote your own work by leaving your mark on others. I just tried this out for the first time last night right after they came out with it, and it seems like a good feature, though I do not plan to abuse it. I think a little social networking and namedropping is okay, but too much of that is just spamming, and I am no spammer.

Not that I would call it spam, but one thing that has led me to Unlike certain people’s and organizations’ Pages is when they add so much content so often that it floods my News Feed. A recording artist I Liked posted updates every few minutes sometimes, saying things like, “I just mopped my kitchen floor in roller skates!” It got obnoxious. I visited the Page to Unlike it and I noticed one of the fans had commented, “Stop clogging my news feed with updates every five minutes!” There are other organizational Pages that seem to make it a point to update at least once a day just to stay relevant even though all they have to say is, “It’s cold here today, but the flowers are still in bloom. Come out and see the Garden!”– along with photos and stories that take up too much space in my News Feed. When that happens, I tend to Unlike that organization’s Page but follow them on Twitter instead, where they can only write 140 characters. Speaking of Twitter…

Twitter

As I’ve said before, I don’t care how many followers I have or how many tweets I post. I might post a few times a week, once a day, or a few times a day during special events. I also don’t follow nearly as many people as I used to. When I first signed up, I invited friends to join Twitter, and some of them joined but only used it a few times and stopped. I stopped following them because there was nothing to follow. I also stopped following people who posted too often, especially when they weren’t really my friends but just people I met once at Tweetups. As of this writing, I only follow 15 people and 11 organizations– though I might follow a couple more organizations I just Unliked on Facebook.

Foursquare

Bah. I don’t need to tell the world where I am just to earn badges or become a “Mayor.” I don’t use Foursquare anymore; I use Facebook Places now, and only to update my friends when I’m at special places for special occasions. Besides, Facebook just introduced Deals, so if I really want to play the customer loyalty game I’ll try it. I don’t know, though– I like to check in to tell friends of my adventures, not to advertise for businesses.

YouTube

Not much change there, really, except that I changed my channel from azsingersigner to danieljamesgreene.

Have you changed the ways you use social media? I would love to hear how.

The YouTube Story

Here’s a pair of cross-referenced videos I put on my old and new YouTube accounts as an “I’m moving” subscriber retention campaign, or what I guess some people might call a rebranding campaign.

This one tells people I’m moving from azsingersigner to danieljamesgreene:

And this one welcomes people to danieljamesgreene and tells them I’ve moved from azsingersigner:

a href=”http://www.youtube.com/user/azsingersigner”>azsingersigner on YouTube now has a brother channel at danieljamesgreene on YouTube. I’ll keep azsingersigner because I’ve had it for four years and have received many views, comments, video responses, subscriptions, favorites, on my videos there. It wouldn’t be right to scrub all that. I’ll just start uploading all my new stuff to danieljamesgreene, and make sure all my old subscribers know to subscribe to my new channel. In case you’re wondering why I didn’t get the username danielgreene on YouTube, it’s because that username was secured by someone in Belgium a month after I joined, and nothing has been done with the account since. Oh well. My husband’s name, andysmithers, was also secured around the same time by someone in the United Kingdom, and nothing has been done with that account either. Username squatting, anyone?

My Usernames on Other Social Networks

• danielgreene on Flickr has been my username for more than four years, so no problem there.
• danielgreene on Twitter has been my username since I first joined almost two years ago, so that’s cool.
• danieljamesgreene on LinkedIn has replaced danieljgreene as my username. You can change your personal URL on LinkedIn, something you can’t do on most social networks.
• danieljamesgreene on Facebook is my Page, and the name on my Page is Daniel Greene. Conversely, danielgreene on Facebook is my personal profile, and my name on my personal profile is Daniel James Greene. Seem strange? Read on.

The Facebook Story

Although it might seem strange that Daniel Greene is danieljamesgreene and Daniel James Greene is danielgreene, there’s a method to the madness. When I first secured my username on June 13, 2009, within the first minute they were available, I picked the name I’d always used. I had barely considered getting a Page, and even if I had a Page, I wouldn’t have been able to secure a username on June 13, 2009 unless I had 1,000 fans by May 31, 2009. When I finally decided to get a Page a few weeks ago, I named it Daniel Greene, which I’ve always gone by professionally. Ironically, I couldn’t secure danielgreene as the username because I had already taken it for my personal profile. So I took the next best thing: danieljamesgreene– my full name including my middle name. But, oops! Now my username for my Page was different from my display name for my Page, and my display name for my profile and Page were the same. It turns out you cannot change your Facebook Page name, but you can change your Facebook profile name. So I changed my Facebook profile display name to Daniel James Greene. Now it’s easier for people to tell the difference between updates from my personal and public accounts. At the same time, I can do the kind of “this is that and that is this” cross-branding that associates one brand with another.

Name Branding

I’m a bit loathe to talk about my names as brands, but — let’s face it — they are. Everybody’s name is, in some way, their brand. One of the reasons I’ve always used my name as my brand is that I do too many things to brand what I do with a company name. As Daniel Greene, I work as an interpreter for the deaf (sign language interpreter and oral transliterator), interpreter trainer, performing artist, writer, Web author, blogger, vlogger, photographer, and more. I do too many different things to limit myself to a blog or YouTube channel about one thing, and it would be too time consuming to maintain separate media channels for all my various vocations.

Using the Middle Name

Daniel James Greene is my full name. There aren’t as many Daniel James Greenes in the world as there are Daniel Greenes, so someday I might have to use my full name as my professional name. For instance, if I joined SAG and there were already a SAG member named Daniel Greene, I would have to join as Daniel James Greene. Likewise, if there are other authors or scholarly writers that use the my first and last name, I might want to use my full name. I plan to go on using the name Daniel Greene as long as I can, but I will use Daniel James Greene when I have to.

Integrity

So that’s the story of my usernames danielgreene and danieljamesgreene. I got them so that I could use my first-last and first-middle-last names for social and professional discoverability and recognition. I like to be able to find the people that matter to me, whether as friends or public figures; in return, I like to help people to find me. I also value integrity and consistency, and I believe in having as consistent an identity as possible. Integrity, to me, is doing what I say I’m going to do and being who I say I am. I believe integrity is also about integrating the various aspects of yourself into one. I’m not interested in using the Internet to take on imaginary personas; I just like being me here, and I prefer to do that with as few names as possible and let people know that both names refer to me.

P.S. I also secured the domain name danieljamesgreene.com and set the URL to resolve to danielgreene.com.

Sometimes I want to talk with people in person about how we talk with people on the Internet. I know I can get very “meta”– I mean, look at my website, where I sometimes blog about blogging—but I think it’s very important that we take some time to talk about how we’re talking. When I say “blogging” and “talking” I’m talking about any kind of media that you share with people on the Internet. Whatever you put out there, you are in effect “talking” to people. When you write comments, fave or “Like” something, rate something, etc., you’re talking to people. You produce and consume enough of these social media (photos, videos, stories, updates, links, comments, etc.), and you’re talking with people. But you’re not talking with them in real life, and you’re not even talking with them in real time. The communication is abstracted and asynchronous.

This evening, I went out with my husband Andy to a local brewery for something called #evfn, or East Valley Friday Night. As the description says, “Some folks calls it a tweetup. I calls it an #evfn. Remember the agenda: no agenda. Have fun. Meet people. Party on!” I’ve been to several of these, well, I calls ‘em Tweetups, and sometimes they can get pretty meta about social media. How do we share updates? Photos? Videos? Personal stuff? Work stuff? What kinds of relationships are made, bettered, or broken online? How do we bring those online relationships offline and vice versa? I love talking about that kind of stuff. In fact, no matter what I’m doing at the moment, I have an intense need to talk about it with others who are doing the same thing and are willing to talk it all out.

“Remember the agenda: no agenda.” I can accept that. I know that some of these people work in social media and Internet industries, so they might be tired of talking about their work. I understand that. People need loosely structured milieux where they can just relax, mingle, and–in the words of Auntie Mame–”Circulate, Patrick, circulate.” And sometimes, sometimes, to “circulate” is just what I want to do. But other times I want a rap group– a structured, moderated discussion. That’s what I wanted tonight.

I did get a bit of what I wanted. When I first got there, we sat around a table and talked about various things including employment, health care, spousal benefits, and how unfair it is that I have to pay a “Domestic Partnership Offset Tax” to keep Andy on my health care plan. We all talked for a while at that one table, and somehow the conversation got around to social media, though I don’t remember whether I steered it in that direction or not. People talked a bit about whether they feed their updates to Facebook from Twitter, whether they share personal updates on Facebook or keep it acceptable for business associates, whether to have a separate Twitter account for protected tweets, etc.

Then I brought up my dilemma about the photo I asked the waiter to take of us (shown above). I said, “Nowadays I could post every bit of media I create to so many channels that I sit there with something for a few minutes thinking, ‘should I post it to my Facebook personal profile, my Facebook Page, Flickr, Twitpic…??’” One person gave an answer in the form of, “This is what you do…” and I felt like it was a move to lay the question to rest. Then more people showed up and the conversation got dropped. I tried to pick it up again and the person who had answered before gave me a card and wrote on it “Read [with three underlines] convinceandconvert.com Jay Baer.” That was the end of the conversation. I felt shut down. I really can’t complain, though. I was probably “holding them hostage” on a topic they no longer wanted to talk about. I was probably the one who was out of order, trying to create an agenda when there was no agenda.

I get that people want the freedom to talk about whatever they want to talk about with whoever they want to talk about it with. I have no problem with it. What I do have a problem with is that I read and read and read but I don’t get a chance talk and talk and talk.

I need a forum for discussion– a structured, moderated, real life, real time conversation about social media. I need to listen to people’s personal experiences with social media and I need to talk about mine. I don’t want the conversation to be about how to “drive traffic” and “target markets” and “strengthen your brand.” I just want to sit around with people who create and share a lot of stuff on the Internet not because they want to make money but just because they want to share. The question for me is: how do we share things with other people. I don’t think that reading another article or attending a social media lecture or listening to a panel discussion is going to satisfy me. I want a rap group with an agenda. Anybody know of one?

[P.S. I spent two hours working on this post last night until my husband literally whined (it's our thing, we mimic our dogs) for me to come to bed at 11. I thought I clicked "Publish" but I actually clicked "Save Draft" which is just as well because I lay in bed worried about what I had written and whether it would hurt anyone's feelings or hurt my standing with the group. I just kept replaying the post over and over in my head while Adam Young's voice singing Alaska played over and over in my head. Tormented, I am. This morning, I woke up early and could not get back to sleep. Again with the blog post and song tormenting me. So I got up to look at this blog post and realized I hadn't published it. Great! Gives me more time to make it right. Now I'm sitting here on the sofa with my laptop over my legs and our dog Buxley swatting my arm with his paw to get my attention. And now it's an hour-and-a-half later and I think I might just be ready to publish this thing whether it's perfect or not and whether or not it ruffles any feathers.]

As I was saying, anybody know of a real life, real time rap group about social media? What ways do you find to have meaningful and satisfying conversations with people who are doing what you are doing and learning to do it well? Can you give me an example of how one of these conversations changed you and made your life easier?

I registered my own Facebook Page the other day and, after I got 25 fans, reserved the username danieljamesgreene (I had already secured danielgreene on June 12, 2009 for my personal profile). The reason I got a Facebook Page is that readers, students, viewers, clients, etc. wanted to Friend me on Facebook, but I only Friend family & friends on my personal profile. I felt bad denying my “customers” access to me on Facebook, yet I wanted to keep my profile a safe place for me to share personal things with the people closest to me.

I had resisted setting up a Facebook Page because I thought it might be considered “conceited” to set up my own “fan” page; however, I finally decided that there wasn’t anything wrong with creating a Page for my public life. After all, I am a “public figure” in the sense that I am a writer, performing artist, photographer, interpreter trainer, et cetera. I do create a lot of work for public consumption. My Facebook Page gives me a chance to be more accessible to people I don’t know well and feel comfortable with how much of my personal life I share with them.

Do you have a Facebook Page? Do you “Like” certain Facebook Pages? How has the Facebook Page helped the relationship between producer and consumer, performer and audience, writer and readership, etc.? How have Pages helped the relationships among fans? I am very interested in hearing about your experience with Facebook Pages as I embark on this new venture.

I continue to take photographs and share them on Flickr. Some of my recent adventures include hiking Camelback Mountain for the first time, a weekend getaway to Jerome, going to the Arizona State Fair for the first time in the five years that I’ve lived here, going “full frame” by trading in my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and EF-S lenses for a used Canon 5D, and meeting a longtime Flickr friend from Brooklyn who visited me and my husband with his husband. It was great to bring the online life and real life together, and we all really hit it off. There are several other photo sets I’ve posted in months since my last blog post as well. The best way to keep up with what I’m up to in a visual way is to follow my Flickr photostream.

I’ve also really gotten into Facebook this year. I don’t add people I don’t know as Friends, and I don’t have a Fan Page, but I do enjoy keeping up with my friends through status updates, photos, videos, links, etc. I am sort of the designated photographer at gatherings of friends and coworkers, so it’s always fun to upload an album from a shared event and tag everyone in it who’s on Facebook– which is most of them. For a while there, I was spending a couple/three hours a day on Facebook, but I’ve cut back because I have so many other priorities. I felt I was neglecting my photography and Flickr social circle for a while there, so I’ve returned to spending a bit more time on that. One thing I love that Flickr added in the last couple of months is People in Photos, which allows you to tag your Flickr friends in photos the way you can tag your friends in photos on Facebook. Those friends have to be Flickr members in order to be tagged, so it’s most useful for photos from FlickrMeets; that is, when a group of photo geeks get together to go on a shooting spree. Not necessarily good for your neighbor’s family’s Thanksgiving party unless they’re all Flickrites themselves. Thanks to this new feature and my general hamminess, I can now point you to photos of me on Flickr. As of this writing, there are over 900, though I’m not sure they are all public!

Like many people, I also got my Twitter account this year. At first, I was frustrated with it and with the way some people twittered “too much.” After a while, I just learned to accept it for what it is. I must admit I only occasionally log in to check up on the people I follow, and I don’t follow a lot of people to begin with. I don’t really care how many followers I have or how many updates I’ve posted. I’m in no hurry to send my thousandth tweet or garner my thousandth follower, though I wouldn’t put it past myself to announce the milestones when they hit.

In addition to sharing my life publicly on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, I created my profile on LinkedIn this year to network with other professionals and share my professional achievements. My greatest professional achievements this year have been coordinating the Purple Communications booth and interpreting pool at the 2009 Arizona RID State Conference, being promoted to Video Interpreter / Trainer at Purple Communications’ Arizona Communication Center, and representing Purple as an interpreter at the National Black Deaf Advocates conference. Outside of my work with Purple, 2009 was the first year I developed and taught ASL interpreting workshops. I know I’ve already shared some of this in this blog, and I’ve even castigated myself for perhaps going overboard in tooting my own horn, but at the end of the year, I must say that I have a feeling of pride. I have been through some dark times in my life, and when you’ve been through that and come out on the other side of it, you cherish every win.

Tonight is the beginning of Chanukah, the eight-day Festival of Lights. I look forward to lighting candles, exchanging gifts, frying donuts and potato pancakes, and going to a party or two. I do think that, in some ways, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. I love both Chanukah and Christmas for the festivities, the colors, the lights, the social events, the cold, dark nights, and yes, the gifts.

What do I look forward to doing next year? I hope that next year brings many more opportunities for me to train video interpreters at Purple Communications and in my own interpreting workshops. 2010 is a year for RID regional conferences, and I plan to submit presenter proposals in the hope of teaching my workshops at at least a couple of them. There is also the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in 2010, which I hope to attend and possibly present at. The National Alliance of Black Interpreters is hosting their conference right here in Phoenix in 2010, and I do hope to be a part of that as well.

What I wish to do in my personal life in 2010 is to show my family how much I love them, to show respect and support to my friends, clients, and colleagues, to take on new challenges and new adventures, to be happy relaxing and being, and to dive deeper into this rich experience we call living.

What may or may not be apparent is that I have felt shame and failure in my life, and there have been a few times I doubted I’d ever achieve anything. When I do manage to do something good, my feelings of past failure and inefficacy drive me to shout my achievements from the rooftops. “See! I’m not a complete failure! I DID something!”

Perhaps it is the fact that there have been so many times in my life when I have felt paralyzed into inaction. I’ve wanted to do many things that I didn’t do because I didn’t believe in myself. Now, when I finally do things that I’ve only been dreaming of doing for years, I feel… well… vindicated! Especially when other people didn’t believe in me, either. It’s like, “How do you like me now?!” Well, maybe not very much, I fear.

What good does it do to shove my success in the faces of people who doubted me? Are they really going to “like me now”? Or are they just going to resent me for rubbing it in their faces that I succeeded in spite of them? My fear is that they are going to resent me as much as I resent them. Resentment begets resentment. The thing to do is forgive everyone for everything, starting with myself.

Will I ever be good enough so that I can stop proving myself to people? Will it ever be enough just to be? Well, sure, but I’d still want to do something. There’s a time to be and a time to do. Maybe if I can master being, then I can be better with doing. Right now, doing is like, “Wow!” A miracle!” (Though, I wonder if that will ever change, for what are being and doing but miracles?)

Another consideration is there may be others who have done what I’ve done and not had the same level of success. Am I hurting them by touting my success? That is not my intention, but I fear it may be a consequence. Then again, there’s that whole thing about, “Who are you not to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?” I would like to think that when I let my own light shine, I give other people permission to do the same (re: Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love).

My best intentions, when I get past the neurotic ego stuff, are to promote the work for the good of others. The workshops I’m doing are designed to help interpreters become better at serving their clients and taking care of themselves. I would like to believe that the work is worth people’s time, and so I promote it so that people can benefit from it. And the truth is that I want to teach, and I can’t teach without students.

An actor cannot perform without an audience. The same is true of any artist or creator of any kind. We create what we do because of our creative impulse. There is nothing to be ashamed of about the creative impulse, and there is nothing wrong with admitting that I am a performer who needs an audience. Yes, I need to say something, and yes, I need you to listen. The tricky part is how to charm you into granting me an audience and then entertain you so you feel it was worth your time.

The best self-promotion is really not self-promotion; it is promotion of one’s work. It is a plea to “let me entertain you” so we can all “have a real good time” (to quote Sondheim). I may be ashamed of the way my ego gets in the way, but I’m working on seeing the greater good beyond myself. In my future promotions, I will be cognizant of the issues I’ve raised here and try to make my statements the kind that promote my work without building myself up or tearing anybody down.

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.

When I got a Flickr account in 2006, I felt compelled to publish every good photo I took. In turn, I felt compelled to document my life in photos so I could share those photos — my life — on Flickr. Then I got a Facebook and Twitter account, and I began to feel compelled to share my life there, too. I enjoyed the response, and that drove me to share more. There’s nothing wrong with the impulse to share experiences, but I have to believe that my life is worth living regardless of whether I’m acknowledged for it.

Maybe I’m having a midlife moment. I’m 42 years old. It’s unclear whether I’ve made a mark on the world. And it’s time to decide whether or not I care. I don’t have kids, my parents are getting older, and I don’t have a lot of siblings or cousins. Who is going to remember me? And does it even matter.

On the one hand, I am coming to terms with my nature. I need to communicate with others, to create my own expression and share it with the world. Looking at people’s enthusiastic self-expression in social media outlets, I can see that I am not alone.

On the other hand, I must resist the compulsion to share photos and status updates in order to add value to my experiences. I don’t need to be applauded for being cool or interesting or cultured. I don’t have to be told I have good taste or talent. It feels good, but becoming addicted to acknowledgment leads to a letdown when I don’t get it.

For a year or two now, I’ve debated whether to take my camera on certain adventures. I want to “show the folks back home!” but the equipment weighs me down and cramps my ability to enjoy my own adventure. I told my husband that I was beginning to question whether I could really experience a moment and record it at the same time, and ever since then he tells me, “live the moment, don’t record it.”

I’m not about to stop publishing to social media, but I will continue to remind myself that what matters is not whether people love your life when you’re dead. What matters is that you love your life while you’re living.