Screen time

I had another revelation this weekend. A reason I’ve been up against doing blog postings is because I was thinking, “Who on earth spends all kinds of time reading other peoples’ musings online?” And what would be the purpose of a relatively unknown Cindy Daniels doing a blog? Then I had a BFO (Blinding Flash of the Obvious).

We all know the stats that “face time” in front of some sort of screen has become America’s number one pastime. Wasn’t that baseball when we were kids? Even the television audience is vying for vital “screen time”, now often replaced by people who prefer to be in front of a computer screen instead of watching TV. They are switching from multiple network and cable channels to surfing for what is interesting or curious, news and weather on demand, social networking, game playing, dating, YouTube and all kinds of other exploring, not to mention emailing and work done with a mouse and keyboard.

I thought I was coming of age a few years ago when I learned T9 on my cell phone so I could actually text faster. My kids rolled their eyes when I excitedly "got it". I thought I was a genius. Then, just a few weeks ago, I finally put up a Facebook page. It took off like wildfire. It wasn’t long ago that my kids informed me I don’t need to be on Facebook because they “didn’t know anyone over the age of 32" that was. To their astonishment (and quite honestly mine), I had 100 "old" friends within the first week – many of them being people my kids consider “cool”. Who knew?!

This whole online interest is not news to anyone, yet it's how I got to my revelation.  This weekend my daughter was showing me some videos that other teenagers made and posted. Many of them were of silly antics which I found difficult to believe or understand the purpose of recording, much less posting. The usual highly intriguing dialogue was someone 'talking' into their camera with an ongoing string of, “Yeah…uhhhh…so….yeah (oh, and the thumbs up with smirky smile) ….ok, soooo....uh, yeah.) I’m thinking to myself, “Good God….people actually spend time watching this stuff?” Curiously, many of them had jillions of hits or numerous comments. I’m wondering about my level of sheer ignorance…clearly there must be SOME value that I completely missed.

Ultimately, that’s when it all clicked! It was wonderful. I completely got over my whininess about writing here.  The way I see it, almost anything I post at least has some thought involved.  And for those who like to read long posts, I may just offer some value for those interested my musings.

As I start moving my little blog boat out of this harbor into the vast sea of dumping writings onto the Web, it only makes sense to open to comments now. So…uhhh....yeah…

Comments

[Robyn Kramer]

Love it, keep writing!