The Ultimate Social Media Clash

If there are two social media networks that people in this world know, it's Facebook and Twitter. So of course there are people that are constantly comparing the two against each other - which is entirely acceptable, of course, and yeah I have some opinions of my own. I've been on Facebook since October of '07 and Twitter since January of '09, so I can tell you that I at least have some experience with both sites as a consumer. I've had the opportunity to watch both sides grow in terms of business to customer relations - a few years ago, it would've been weird to be so actively marketed against on Facebook, but now none of us blink an eye. Ads are everywhere, and we just can't help it. (Use adblock all you want, but all it'll do is minimize the outward spam.)

I really like both sites, though for different reasons. I can't tell you why I initially joined Twitter - I don't remember - but I do know that a few months after I joined Twitter a lot of people in the online community that I was a part of joined it too. And suddenly participating went from being one of thousands of viewers on Youtube to being able to interact more directly with these people. It brought them down to an even level, instead of placing them on a pedestal. And yes, as the sites have gained more popularity and numbers of followers have grown, it's been a little harder to connect to people again, but at the same time it isn't. Companies have been able to connect to their customers even more know, and it's great. (Sure, I may never be able to talk to Ashton Kutcher even though he doesn't have more followers than anyone in the world anymore, but that's not the point.) The amount of direct customer interaction is... nice. It's really nice to be able to know that there's a person sitting on the other side of the Internet and they're meant just to talk to you. I do feel like customer interaction can be better/more direct on Twitter than it is on Facebook, though it does depend on the company. Twitter you can talk directly to the company, while on Facebook I feel like your comment will just get lost in a sea of other comments.

I do use both sites to connect with my friends, especially friends that I've met at conferences or haven't seen since high school. But I can tell you that while my interactions with my high school friends are mostly on Facebook (out of the two sites I'm discussing here), my interactions with my online friends are mostly on Twitter. And I know that I'm a hundred times more inclined to use Twitter to ramble about whatever I happen to be doing at the moment than being that person that posts a Facebook status every few hours (or even more often). The online world has been adapting to Twitter much better, and with our world so quickly growing into something that can't exist without the Internet, I think it's important to adapt to the way of life online. Facebook is great, but Twitter is better (at least for this).

How to Forget About a Blog... or, Settling into a New Routine

How many people can say that they've started to keep a diary or something similar, gotten three pages in, and then completely forgot about it? I know I'm definitely guilty of doing that many times, not only with diaries but also with blogs and such. But I've been getting better! Over the last eight months I've successfully kept a journal (that I write in every night, give or take a few days). What's the trick? All I had to do to get myself to write in my journal every night was to settle into the routine of it, and now the only time I can go to bed without doing it is if I'm so tired I actually can't think straight.

So I promise not to abandon this blog like I have many before it - I just have to settle into a routine. Over the last few weeks of the summer, between coming home and going back to school, creating a new routine for a short period of time was hard. But now that I'm back at school, I just need to set myself a time once a week where I'll sit down and tell myself "this is blog writing time." Settling into a routine is good for other things besides blog writing. I'm not a morning person, but I've been getting up at 7:30 every morning just because it makes things easier (even though my earliest class is at 9:20). That way I have time to pull myself out of bed, enjoy breakfast, and get ready for my day. On days when I have a later class, I've been going to the gym. All I had to do was find the time in my schedule to do it and stick to it.

Of course, settling into a new routine takes time. Though I've been good about it for the last four days, I still wouldn't call it something that I can do regularly. Honestly, I've never really been a morning person, and if you had told me to get up every morning at 7:30 last semester I would've laughed (and promptly gone back to sleep). But now I'm not rushing to get ready for class, and even though yes, I have to go to bed earlier, it's nice to have my mornings mapped out. And maybe by October this schedule will be second nature. (The only thing that Google was useful for in telling me about how long it takes for a habit to form is that no one knows really knows how long it takes. Thanks.)

Sure, there's something wonderful about being spontaneous, but that's what the weekends are for.

Being Displaced

What's one easy way for me to tell that I'm growing older? I actually get homesick now.

Ever since I was born, (with the exception, for the most part, of the summer after I graduated from high school) I have not spent a single summer at home. Every summer from the age of seven until I was seventeen, I have gone to at least one summer camp, if not two. The other parts of the summer were spent either travelling or at the home my grandparents would rent for the summer in the Poconos. I was home maybe for two weeks after school let out and two weeks before school started again.

And you know what? I loved it. I loved not being home for the summer - sure, as I grew older, I was upset about not seeing my friends, but I grew used to it and accepted that I would spend the summer away while they all got to stay home and enjoy each other's company without the pressure of schoolwork. I loved being able to do and learn new things at summer camp, see new places, go swimming, and not be stuck in a house in the suburbs with absolutely nothing to do. At least I could be stuck with nothing to do in the Poconos, where there was a lake. I needed time away from the suburbs so that by the time summer was finally over, I didn't mind being there so much.

But now that I've gone off to college, I don't live at home for ten straight months. And while at college I have enough to keep me busy that I don't often miss home, spending the majority of my summer an ocean away hits a little hard sometimes. I wouldn't trade my experiences studying abroad for the summer for the world, but sometimes it hits me that I miss home. I miss my friends that I left behind, I miss my dog, and I miss not having to worry about the fact that everything is slightly more expensive since it's in Euros. I even feel a little displaced, because I don't really have a permanent home right now, especially since my parents have moved. I have my parents' house and my dorm room, but my parents' house is no longer the house I grew up in and my dorm room is only stable for a school year, before I move out again.

I'll admit I think too much about my life objectively, where I'm living and how it pertains to how I feel at the current moment, but it was nice being a kid. Being so glad to be out of the house for two months and not missing a single moment of it. Now I kind of wish I had a stable home that I knew I would be coming back to. I guess now that I'm growing up I just have to make my own home.

Living Abroad

For the last six weeks, I have been living in Galway, Ireland. It's an absolutely amazing experience to live in a different country - to experience the different culture, traditions, music, and languages. But at the same time there's something really plain about the whole situation. Yes, it's not America, and in some way the differences are obvious, but in a lot of ways after a while it doesn't even matter anymore. Whether I was living in Galway or New York City or any other city, there's something inherently similar about all of these places after a while.

It may be the process of settling into a routine. Sure, on the weekends my friends and I will go sightseeing or to the museum, and experience the local pubs. We'll go do touristy things, and it's a lot of fun. But during the week, life is a little more routine. We go to class, we go to our internships, we work, come home, make dinner, and work some more or just relax at home. It's the kind of routine I could have no matter where I'd be studying. Sure, it's not like that every night, but a lot of the times it just isn't feasible to go to a pub or stay out too long when you have a 9 am class the next morning.

There's nothing wrong with settling into a routine - it's comforting, predictable. But it's not exciting, and some days I feel like I should be out in the city, doing something reckless and unpredictable, even though I would definitely regret it come morning. I would not pass up the experience of living abroad for the world, but living in a city is not quite the same as if I had found myself in the middle of rural Ireland, having to help farm every day and being truly disconnected from the world. The best way to experience new things is to jump completely out of your comfort zone, but that's so difficult to do that it's easier to have a more passive exploration, with some comforts that never really change. 

Let me take another shot at this...

In an effort to spread myself as far and wide across the Internet as possible (because why not?), I'm taking another shot at having a normal, proper blog. One not alternating text with random quotes and images, as my Tumblr does, but just a straight up text-based blog (for the most part), just with my thoughts.

What will I write here? I'm not sure yet. Considering that I write several times a day (between various social networks and private journals), I'm not sure how copious this'll be. But I sincerely hope that you'll find this entertaining and decide to stick around, maybe take a chance with what I've got to say.

Also, intro posts are always annoying to write. You're here! Hello! I hope you stick around, but I completely understand if you don't. I'm in a million other places as well, so I'm sure we'll meet on the web in one way or another. Thanks for reading!