Good news: Here's an entry that has nothing to do whatsoever with insurance or vehicles, for a change! Before I go back to writing about that again!

Bad news: it's on another topic that has made me previously gripey.

I am pondering Getting My Shit Together in life with regards to writing. I signed up for my old writing group again (now that I'll have a car to get to it), I am talking to Melinda about writing stuff, and lately I am trying to write more on the nonfiction side in life. I especially need to work on my learning-to-drive memoir-thing, updating it with new material.

Now, if I ever get my shit together on these things and ever try to make money on this...I will be forced to become a social media whore. So I forced myself to go to a talk on social media being given at my work during lunch. My career counselor was attending this thing too, so that helped my desire to actually stay in the room instead of running out in horror, as I wanted to do. Or at least I was snarking with her during it.

The dude was some kind of career coach (my career counselor was all, "anyone can call themselves a coach, there's no code of conduct for that"). To his credit, he did actually promote blogging and mention that online journals used to exist for the first ten minutes, and said all of the other stuff you do should be directing people back to your blog. I approved of that.

And then of course it went into the usual stuff. I seriously wondered about his advice to put your picture on every single thing, including Linked In. I said to my career counselor, "Hey, you know how you're not supposed to put your picture with your resume because of possible age discrimination? Is it a super good idea to make it easy for people to discriminate against you on Linked In by having them see your picture?" "That's a good point," she said. "And what about racial discrimination too?" If I had actually wanted to engage with the speaker, which I was trying not to do, I probably should have said something about that.

There was an interminable discussion about how Twitter gets you jobs by networking. At one point he made us all get into groups and "discuss" how we could use social media for networking. The three older folks around me were totally confused as to what he meant by that. "He means that you have to friend everybody. End of discussion," I said. And yeah, that was pretty much where he was going with that. Instead, my group started asking me about blogging and why I wasn't into social media despite, as far as they could tell, knowing a lot about it. I'd rather not know, but I can't find a hole deep enough to stick my head in to NOT hear about how to use Twitter every. damn. day. I could probably use it successfully instantly, I just...don't wanna.

My career counselor pretty much nailed it: "You like to write, don't you?" "Yes, I said, and social media isn't actually writing." No wonder I find it boring as fuck. I got told about how wonderful it was to hook up with your high school pals again on Facebook by one lady, and I was all, "well, my ex-friends found out I didn't have a husband and two kids and then somehow they had zero interest in me any more, so yeah, reconnecting didn't work so well there." My career counselor was all, "Yeah, I get that too! They suddenly lose all interest in talking to me because I don't have kids!"

I had to leave the talk ten minutes early to go back to work. I was pretty happy about that.

You know, it's one thing to find, say, Twilight, annoying. I attempted to read it and got bored very early on, and then I heard it ends very badly. I can say it's not to my taste. I hear about it every freaking day, but nobody's forcing me to read it, watch the movies, name my imaginary children after it, or cover myself in body glitter. Social media also bored the shit out of me after about 2 days of being signed up on any one of them, but.... if I ever change careers or want to, I have to love it. I will have no choice but to love it and do it constantly. And that makes me feel sick.

Seriously, I don't know how the fuck I am going to stomach HAVING to use this crap. I think David Sedaris is old fogey enough and rich enough to pay someone else to update his mandatory social media crap and otherwise ignore it, but alas, I don't have those advantages. Though I am seriously, seriously pondering how feasible it is to pay someone to do that shit for me anyway when the time comes. Maybe Melinda....?

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