28th Jan 2009
the past is present
Over the last few weeks, my past has caught up with me — namely, Facebook has hooked together my middle and high school years with who I am today and I live in constant fear of a photo of me with a wall of bangs and heavy eyeliner in my Depeche Mode/Cure/Gothic days. (God help us all). Yesterday — or maybe the day before — a photo surfaced from a 70s party in the early 2000s in Nashville: I’m with my first husband, wearing a minidress and orange go-go boots with straight blonde hair to my shoulders. Nice. I’ve thought about “un-tagging” myself in it but other than the silly outfit, it’s not too bad. The funny thing is how all of the people in the shot have changed — we’re teachers, professors, researchers, managers, scientists, public health administrators, mothers, fathers, you name it. What was silly and funny in our 20s is already nostalgic. Does this mean I’m getting old? Argh.
I know the feeling and experienced what I would like to call past life comic/black-mailable
photographic encounters, but I think of it like this: all my experiences are steps to be climbed (the good, bad, and silly)
the trick of it is not to get stuck on a landing for too long, get help from friends and family during the tough part of the climb,
climb together with family and friends during the easy parts and just keep on trucking up the steps.
I am the sum of my steps
Well, I had to check the picture and, no, really, it’s not bad at all. A picture of me and my 8th grade girlfriend (she was in 9th!) showed up recently. I actually was happy to see it.
I have just allowed my name to be seen by people who aren’t my friends on Facebook. When I signed up you still had to be affiliated with a school/university and I just didn’t want to deal with it. I checked it out mostly to see what my tech-happy friends were so excited about.
It creeped me out when a female out-of-town friend asked me to dinner as a comment on my status.
Today a student, whom I don’t know well, asked me if I was on facebook. I don’t think I’m ready for students-who-aren’t-really-friends to be my facebook friends.