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It takes a lot of work to keep my online self up to date. Twenty-five years ago I didn’t have this problem, because there was no online me. Or rather, my total online presence was just a few lines of text crawling sluggishly over an antiquated 300-baud phone line.
I had no online photos, no video, no Facebook page, no Twitter, no audio clips, nothing. In the digital realm, I was the Invisible Man.
These days I’m all over the internet like a rash on a baby’s backside. Chances are you are, too, whether you want to be or not.
I’ll admit social media seemed kind of fun, at first. Pics of grandkids, shared recipes, family updates … it was a great way of staying in touch with loved ones at a distance.
Then some brainiac got the idea to use social media to make a buck. As a writer/musician I was encouraged to post regular updates in order to develop “likes” in order to generate business and thereby revenue for everyone in my life who was interested in getting a piece of the action. Since the action in question (money from my writing and/or music) is miniscule, nobody nagged me much about keeping those online posts current.
When I “mostly” retired a few years ago, I figured I’d quit updating my Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms altogether. And I tried. But over the past 25 years, a strange thing has occurred: we’re all now EXPECTED to maintain those postings.
If you have no online presence and you’re not Amish, people think you’re weird. Or maybe running from the IRS or Homeland Security.
And heaven help you if you experience a life-changing event and fail to document it properly on Facebook (if you’re old like me) or one of the hipper, cooler platforms I don’t know about because I AM old like me. It happened to me recently; since then I’ve been trying to reconcile my online life with my real one.
See, during this past year I lived through some tectonic changes. I got divorced, I … nope, I guess that was just about it as far as the tectonic stuff goes. Dealing with the fallout from that soaked up much of my spring and summer. I clocked a million miles on my bicycle, pedaling away whatever pain and bitterness still clung to me. I would have seen a shrink, but bicycling is cheaper and works just as well. Maybe better.
I dated a little bit and met Bones, the wonderful woman who is rapidly becoming the most important thing in my life; I hung out with my son, daughter and grandkids; I wrote, played music, raked leaves, chopped wood, fished, kayaked, cooked dinners and breakfasts. Even got a colonoscopy (NOT fun). What I didn’t do was post about any of it on social media, not on my personal pages anyway. The band page received a couple nods regarding upcoming gigs, but that was about it.
So to the online world (my many “friends,” most of whom I don’t know from Adam) my marriage was still OK and my life unchanged. It made for some confusing conversations when I ran into these folks at the grocery.
With Bones’ prompting, I finally got online and updated my status, added a few new pics, wished a couple people happy birthday and then logged off again. Yesterday, I finally remembered to delete my profile from the dating site I’d been using early in the summer.
I hadn’t been on there since meeting up with Bones and there were several messages in my inbox. They got deleted along with my other information. Not because I fear I’d be “tempted” by other women, but only because I’m no longer looking for that kind of relationship; one’s enough.
In fact at my age, even one romance sometimes seems a lot to maintain.
At any rate, my online self is now closer to real-life me. I have no idea why this is important or how it became so; I just know that it is.
My goal at this point is to do what I can to prevent any more changes to my life. I don’t mind the changes themselves, but the paperwork is murder.
