I now check facebook a lot.  After days spent obsessively snooping at what everyone else was doing, I felt some tentative confidence to make several brief posts.  My first post, to a long ago acquaintance, I hit the wrong button and it took me three days to figure out she never saw my carefully crafted reply on her wall.  OK, I now understand how to reply to someone writing on my wall.  I think.

I spent another week “trolling” for new friends, which I thought was such a clever play on words until my cousin used the exact same phrase. On a facebook post.  So much for my creative way with words.  Perhaps I was mining new veins for gold.  Never mind.

I still find FB nerve-wracking.  It seems unpredictable, what it discloses about people.  It announces status updates of questionable nature.  One friend suddenly came up as “no longer married” .  That freaked me out (did she just announce an impending divorce in such an impersonal and public way?)  Then, of course, I figured out that she is 40-something like me and she just hit the wrong button.  But that begs the question — how many wrong buttons have I already hit and inadvertently sent bizarre updates about myself?  Does it broadcast how often I have changed my profile picture because I thought it made me look old/fat/ridiculous?  Ridiculous as in ridicule-inducing-ousness?  Does the act of changing my profile picture umpteen times in itself broadcast something lacking in my character??

I lay awake at night thinking about these things.  But I have joined a FB writers’ group thing (thanks to Kent for the hook-up) and now check the discussion boards, and even posted something.  About blogging.  Nothing bad happened, that I know about. From that group, I am starting to see the light about how social networking can create and enhance a writer’s platform.  I have yet to join a local writers’ critique group, so social networking provides a viable online alternative for feedback.  Plus, peeking into the lives of all these writers, talking about their elevator pitches and revising chapter 25, helps inspire me to write more every day.

Progress.