While I won’t divulge my advanced age – at least not on our first date – let me just state that my daughter says just because I got her first-generation iPod as a hand-me-down, I – and she says this in no uncertain terms – am NOT of the iPod generation. But I will admit that I am late to the party when it comes to ubiquitous technologies such as owning an iPod, carrying a Blackberry, and learning Power Point.
And you can add to that list my appearance in the wide world of the Blogosphere.
It’s not that I didn’t know what a blog was – what do you mean it’s not a medical term for that piece of bologna stuck in my coronary artery.
It’s just I had my own preconceived, stereotypical opinion what a blog was, and I surely did not see myself as “one of those kind of people” who actually felt an urge to publish what I considered was their personal diary out “there” in cyberspace for everyone to peruse.
Not unusual for my generation, I was not a blogger – I had never been to any MySpace or Facebook pages – let alone had one of my own – rarely peeked at a YouTube video – and that was usually when someone sent me a link I just had to look at.
And Second Life…you have to be kidding – I can hardly handle the First one.
For many years, I fashioned myself as a wannabe serious humor writer (not quite the oxymoron it appears). As the blog universe expanded like a supernova, I continued to dream of the day I would be interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR about my latest (non-existent) book. I took writing classes – not that it often shows – I bought books on writing – Amazon.com loves me - I started my own website – no one told me I needed actual content – and I even tried to prescribe to the law according to the AP Stylebook – all the while blogs were becoming more mainstream.
Me blog? Hah! Would Tim Cahill blog? (In reality I have no idea.) Would Dave Berry blog? (Could it be…nah, not Berry, a serious humor writer, if there ever was one.)
But the light finally came on. The old dog finally sat up. This “blogging thing” might actually amount to something.
So as a nod for the perennial New Years resolution, I resolved to get on the bus. And how serendipitous was my timing as NPR came out with a week-long series on this, being the 10th anniversary of the “web log” on the day after my net Swami takes pity on me and takes me to the edge of the cliffs of the deep blog ocean and does what a good teacher does – gives he a quick swimming lesson; points out the life jackets; and then kicks me in the backside.
So, here I am blogging - and hopefully you will be here also - so I don’t become, according to NPR, one of the 100 million blogs out there (100,000 new ones every day – I wonder what the other 99,999 today look like) that are mainly being read by the blogger and his mother, as the NPR article stated.
One down, infinity to go …the world waits in breathless anticipation.