What’s that word for when you’re feeling an equal mix of happiness and sadness? That’s what I feel when I look at this photo of Pace waiting for the bus on his last day of kindergarten…
We learn to see the present as a “future past” and focus on how we will document, and self-document, even as the events are transpiring around us. And what happens? It distracts us. In the process of tweeting, posting a Facebook status, choosing the right filter for Instagram, and creating a Vine, we have become third parties to the experiences that were meant to include us.
I’m not sure I agree with all of the article’s conclusions. For example, it implies all Facebook users are self-centered egotists while some research shows that most Facebook behaviour is fairly innocuous and really the only indicator of narcissism is people who have extreme numbers of friends. And I’d even dispute that – as someone closing in on 1000 Friends, I attribute that as much to having lived for extended periods in three different provinces in jobs/schools where I had contact with a large number of people – but maybe I’m just in denial about my own narcissism? 😉
Anyhow, in my experience, you get the full range of personality types on Facebook with as many generous, thoughtful people posting interesting, engaging content that may or may not be about themselves.
And of course what you see is also as much a reflection of who is in your Facebook friends list – I know I’m going to get a lot of political content, a lot about libraries – simply because of who I’ve chosen to be friends with on Facebook.
Timing and geography are factors too – because we used to live in Calgary I’ve seen (and appreciated) a lot of flood-related updates over the past few days but others might not see much about the flood if they are from Newfoundland and living in Ontario for example.)
Here’s a small experiment. Here are the last ten posts on my Facebook stream as I type this with an attempt to rate each post on a completely arbitrary “Ego” scale of 1-5 with 1 being very low ego content and 5 being completely self-centered…
Someone waiting for a family member’s grade eight grad to start (3)
Flood update info from Sisika First Nation in Alberta (1)
“Do do do do, do dee do do do do… dee dee dee do, do do, dee do do…” (4 – seems innocent but somebody’s bragging about being at the new Superman movie and I’m jealous so there!)
A library linking to a tribute to SF writer, Richard Matheson (1)
Someone posting a link to their business (4)
Link to a newspaper story about Saskatchewan people helping out in Alberta (2)
Link to an anti-uranium story (2)
Link to an Amnesty International story about their efforts in Mauritania. (4 – Amnesty is sort of bragging here I guess. Also, I’m not too embarrassed to admit I had to Google that country.)
Someone posts a few picture of their daughter’s lion costume for a dance recital. (4 – although honestly, I think these kinds of posts are often where the “Facebook is for egotists” charges come from. But really, it’s often as much a matter of volume as far as I’m concerned. If this person posted nothing but pictures of her kid every day, multiple times per day, that might be a bit much. But every once in awhile, who cares? It’s part of the fire hydrant streaming articles and photos and funny cat videos at me all hours of the day. Big deal.)
Now, where’s that selfie I took in the mirror this morning? Oh here it is…
I would’ve sworn I posted this video around Pace’s first day of kindergarten but apparently, I only put it on Facebook.
So, instead of a rare re-post of a Music Monday song which I thought it would be, this video gets to be posted for the first time here to celebrate Pace’s kindergarten graduation today.
As I said yesterday, it’s hard to believe how fast this year’s gone. Shea pointed out that it’s only going to go faster and one of these days, we’ll be waking up to prepare him for his high school graduation. :-0
“Anything Like Me” – Brad Paisley
Anyhow, congrats Spaceman! We’re beyond proud of you!
Hard to believe that tomorrow is Pace’s kindergarten graduation.
The past year has flown by in so many ways – when the year started, Pace was an only child; now he’s a big brother. When the year started, he was still working on learning his alphabet, now he’s regularly writing out complete sentences (phonetically – the spelling will come in grade one I’m sure!). When the year started, his teacher tells us he was quite shy and quiet, now he’s apparently come out of his shell and is a model student.
Here’s a short clip I recorded of Shea, Pace and I talking after he got home from his first day. (I recorded this while we were having supper so sorry for the incidental sounds of utensils clicking, people chewing, etc.)
The highlight of his first day (and focus of most of this clip) was a visit from the “Muffin Man”, a mysterious figure who snuck into their classroom and stole some muffins then led them on a clue-filled scavenger hunt around the school, introducing them to all the important places to know – the gym, the principal’s office and the library!
(Apparently this memory stays with the kids – a co-worker whose much older kids went to the same school many years ago asked if the kindergarten kids still got a visit from the Muffin Man!)
This Pinterest site takes photos of youngsters dressed in fashionable clothes and provides hilarious write-ups to narrate the life of Quinoa, the trendy perfect child of trendy perfect parents.
Funny stuff.
Everything went fine at Quinoa’s playdate with Booker until she realized that when he said he loved vinyl, he meant jackets not vintage records.
Baker captivated me. His songs are closely observed narratives of eccentric and marginalized people finding meaning in seemingly defeated lives–almost like Leonard Cohen’s, if Cohen had been a Baptist raised in West Texas.
Sam recently had a Kickstarter to raise funds for his latest album (make sure you read those rewards for the different Pledge Levels – I wish I could’ve afforded to pledge $10,000 to the project!)
I was one of the lucky ones to get a digital copy through this Kickstarter a couple months before the official release date.
(I’ll take this opportunity to throw in a link to Kicktraq.com – a site that sort of acts like a Billboard magazine for Kickstarter projects with charts, news stories and so on.)
