Social Networking

Brutal honesty time:  I am lousy at networking.  In a large gathering of people I am more than likely to be found in a corner by myself, with my nose stuck in a book.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing—books are great.   However, this is an entrée into the topic of my blog—I may not be any better at social networking.  I have been on Facebook for over eight years, back when the only thing you could do was look at someone’s profile.  There was none of this status update witchcraft you see now.  I’ve been posting this blog for over a year, and been on Pinterest nearly as long.  I was a slower convert to Twitter, and now I’m on Google+ as well.  I honestly don’t know what any of this means.  I’m not an outgoing, extraverted person, though I was born that way; I simply became more introverted over the years as I found that I had little in common with my peers.  Oh well.  It’s still not very easy for me to forge personal connections, which is likely another reason I enjoy writing; it’s a fantasy where people get over their shyness and loneliness to find lasting happiness.  Back to networking, though—I am making  an honest effort to branch out and promote myself in better ways, because I know that it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

Heat Exhaustion

Some random observations for today:

-I can't believe it took me so long to join the Pinterest craze.  It's like a mural of every picture I love, and the kind of thing kids have been doing for years when they cut and paste magazine pictures to a piece of paper.  Except that I've always hated the idea of cutting up my own magazines!

-Summer showed up with a vengeance on its first day.  Stepping outside this evening was like stepping into an oven.

-I finally got to see the movie Practical Magic.  Sandra Bullock is always amazing.

-My book is not selling in mass quantities, but the free Kindle version was downloaded way more times than I expected.  So maybe, slowly but surely, my name is getting out there.

-Editing my second book is pretty intense, but also kind of fun.  I'm really proud of it.

-I have likely read more books in the first six months of this year than I did my entire two years of graduate school.  Seriously.

-I want to wear cowboy boots when I get married.


Currently listening to:  Hands to Heaven by Breathe

Pin Your Name to My Heart

Thanks to my wonderful friend Josie, I decided to become a member of the Pinterest community.  I border on being a Luddite sometimes, for a variety of personal and logistical reasons, so me branching out into so much technology this year is a big step.  In graduate school we discussed a wide variety of emerging technologies that would shape the future of librarianship—and the world at large.  Perhaps Pinterest is the newest social tool for authors to share their works?

I will say that Pinterest Day One has not been the easiest.  Learning how to pin images to my boards and how to search and find other users and their boards involved a steep learning curve.  Then there was the business of internet connectivity and the whole mess of logging in and verifying my email…I was ready to give up in a hurry after all of that.  Once I finally figured out how to pin images, it became a lot easier.  There’s no way to know how far I will actually take the Pinterest thing.  So far it seems a nice way to look at photos.

One nice feature of Pinterest thus far is that it is linked to Facebook.  When my last computer died, I lost my favorites, including a webpage and wiki I had made while in graduate school.  I tried but was never able to find them again, so I have no way of knowing if they are even still floating around in cyberspace (the wiki should be anyway) so I find myself hoping, at last, that some of my web creations are…lasting.

Currently listening to:  The Sweetest Days by Vanessa Williams

http://m.pinterest.com/conradcorner/