All things in Moderation

This time last year you would have found me completely ignorant when it came to social media. I was a woman still in the dark ages, wondering if Twitter was a vulgar word and if FaceBook was a yearbook online. Blogs were as foreign to me as eating meat is to a vegetarian and links were something rich men wore on the cuffs of their shirts. Bookshelves were those tangible wooden things in my family room and blackberries were what you needed to make a great pie. But I can say with great pleasure that I am quickly learning the ropes.

I now know that YouTube is not a request to float down the river but is instead where you can download videos or watch about a bazillion videos downloaded by others. I now know that I prefer FaceBook to MySpace which seems to be for a much younger crowd. I have my own website, I Blog my random thoughts (which I am still not sure are being read by anyone), I review books online, and I Tweet and Retweet pearls of great wisdom. OK, maybe I made the wisdom part up, but you must admit I do seem to be getting the hang of this social networking phenomenon.

Spending time on the computer, however, can become addictive. I was lured into the Farmville web and found myself spending time feeding animals and harvesting crops into the wee hours. I started checking my e-mails every ten minutes to see if anyone or anything had changed when I stopped to drink a lemonade or clip my nails. I checked my publishers FaceBook site constantly to see if I had missed any nuggets of useful information. It was almost so bad I could have stood up in a group and said, "Hi my name is Aileen and I am an internetaholic."

So much to my surprise, I recently discovered that I was stronger than the the ebb and flow of the social media sea. "How did I make this great discovery," you ask? I went on vacation to wild and wonderful West Virginia the birthplace of my father. My father and mother take my family and my brother's family to West Virginia annually and this year was no exception. The ten of us stayed in a log cabin in the woods equipped with satellite internet connections for my brother's laptop. But the beauty of the mountains, the cavern tours, the cool river waters, and God's creatures all around me kept my interest and soothed my soul. As a matter of fact, the day I returned home was a continuance of the calm. I had overcome the urgent desire to jump immediately back into the fray. Instead I gradually got back into the groove by downloading my vacation pictures. So through this journey that has seen me go from inept to skilled, I have learned one important thing. All things are good in moderation. Signing of for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day!