Wednesday, August 26, 2009

[] oh...and thnx for the tea []

i had the chance to hang out this past weekend with some great intellectual kind of folk. while we met at a stupid chain restaurant, the conversation was perfect. perfectly interesting and perfectly funny. i hope the evil combination of facebook/twitter won't steal these types of get togethers away from me. but my fears are slightly based in reality. for example, for the past few years i have sent out group texts that would look like this "hey friends, great night to walk around downtown...anyone up for moxie, dinner, people watching?" friends would text back and we all would meet up. it was that simple. now days, my simple silly little texts get logged with other messages coming in from networking sites on friends phones. my simple silly little text cannot compete with the big boys of twitter and facebook updates. who would want to go out when you can read about john jay and grant baldwin (love you both!) eating pancakes together??? does this make sense to anyone else?

i like analogies, so here is one: if we went to the grocery store and were only offered 4 choices, we could make a decision and leave (texting). however, one year later, the manager of the grocery store thought she should start offering 8 choices, just for novelty sake (myspace/facebook). during the following year, the manager of the store decided to let her 19 year old son take over. He not only offered the 8 previous grocery choices, but he then expanded the store to carry a line of uuber rad self adhesive tattoos (twitter). he became very successful with the tattoo gig, so successful, that he didn't have time to manage the grocery end of the sales. he made the quick desicion to drop the grocery end of the store all together, just to expand the tattoo empire even more. the community was mad. they needed groceries, even if they had only the 4 original choices. they stopped supporting his store and eventually the self adhesive tattoo gig was up.

i love technology. i don't want facebook, tweets and texting to die.  i just want all of us to be more intentional with our friendships.  thank you to all of you that have given me face time the past year, i truly appreciate it!