Friday, April 06, 2012

Have You Earned Your Social Media Merit Badge?

How many of us sit at our computers and decide we're going to take over the world with social media? We're going to blog every day. Set aside time for tweeting. Dive into the depths of our Facebook account. Build our writing platform come Hell or High Water!

And then you look up from your desk and it's already noon and you've got to get something out of the freezer for dinner; fold the clothes in the dryer before they wrinkle; talk to your mother who complains you never call her, and run to the store for eggs and toilet paper. Before you know it, it's time for the kids to come home, or the dog has escaped and your neighbor is calling you to get Barney out of his flowerbeds.

Or maybe the warm spring air is calling you outside, and you notice how awful your own flowerbeds look from the winter, so you dust off your garden tools and dig up a few weeds. Before you know it, it's time to pull dinner out of the oven, eat, clean up the kitchen, on and on ... and there's always that novel on your bedside table staring at you. The one you fall asleep reading five minutes after your head hits the pillow.

The next morning brings new resolutions, or pretty much the same ones you made the day before as you sit at your computer, staring at your list of things to do you should've tackled the day before.

Come on. Admit it. How many of us really want to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and all the other sights designed to suck time away from us. How does one successfully find the excitement in it? The feeling of accomplishment? All while knowing we need to start the next book, outline, research, edit, and query? I think maybe it's that we use time as an excuse. Think? The fact of the matter is ... we really don't want to do it. So the question becomes, what can we do to make ourselves want to spend the time tweeting? Facebooking? Caring about every Linked-In email that plugs up our Inbox?

Sure, sure ... we've heard it all before ... it's something we have to do to be successful. So you wonder how many tweets are sincere and how many are working toward their Tweetie Bird Merit badges? "How many followers/friends do you have?" Na-na-na-na na, na.

I'm finding too many people whose lives are wrapped around their Facebook account, when really, they desperately need to mow their dang yard, play with their kids, bake a pie for their sick neighbor. There's got to be line drawn somewhere in all this. Any ideas?

Blessings to you and yours.

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