there’s not enough red hot to make crow taste good
UPDATE 2020: The crow wouldn’t stay down and I’m no longer on Facebook or anything else but LinkedIn. But this piece was fun to write, so I’m keeping it.
Fuck.
Now that I got that out of the way, I guess it’s time to end my year of near-bliss. It was probably inevitable. I mean I’m supposed to be a professional communicator, after all. That means people pay me to write stuff, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m good at it. That’s really up to you. Either way, I should probably be accessible on social media. More than just LinkedIn, I mean.
If you’ve ready any of my stuff, you know I’ve been unfairly asking Jenni to pimp my blogposts out to all her friends so a few people might actually read them. She’s effectively become my Facebook shield, too. But it turns out that probably isn’t fair to her. She doesn’t mind. She’ll probably post my stuff anyway because sometimes she thinks I’m funny. But if I were to rejoin and open an author page (just for the record, I really don’t even like to think of myself as an author. I’m a storyteller.), then people could follow me there. And I wouldn’t have to poke at her to shamelessly plug my stuff like a toddler asking for candy in a grocery store. “Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” Or like young Emily on a road trip to Lockport:
Emily: How many more minutes until we get to New York?
Me: We just left our driveway, Goon. Please go to sleep.
Emily: But how many more minutes?
Jenni (waking up because she had already fallen asleep… and then blatantly lying): It will go faster if you’re sleeping, honey.
Emily: But how many minutes?
Me (thinking): Fuck. That’s clock math. I suck at clock math.
Jake: Shut. Up. Eh. Muh. Leeeeeeeee!
Me: Be nice, Jake.
Me (thinking again): Thanks, Mancub. Silent high-five!
Oh, how things have changed.
I also blame WordPress. No matter what I do, I can’t seem to make it send notifications to my subscribers when I publish a new blog. Some people get them and some don’t. It works for a while and then it doesn’t. I know, I know. As my IT friends at Deloitte used to say, “It’s probably a PICNIC problem.” Jerks. Lovable jerks. Really smart jerks. But jerks nonetheless.
No, wait. I can’t really back up the “jerks” part. Only one of them was a jerk. You can fight over which one because I’m not telling.
Anyway, I’m already a big enough pain in Jenni’s ass on a growing list of things, so maybe it’s time. Plus, if I’m being honest, I actually do miss some of you. I like seeing what you’re up to. Pictures of your kiddos, pets, and places you’ve been. And fun people you’ve met (Dave Luke). Not only that, if I’m going to ask you to read my silly musings and sometimes-difficult-to-follow-because-they-are-born-from-my-particular-brand-of-crazy blogs, then I guess I should be prepared to read your stuff, too. That seems fair, right?
So, here I write. Quietly slinking back to Facebook with my tail between… wait. Your tail goes between your legs when you’re slinking away from something. Where do you put your tail when you’re slinking toward something? Shit. This is harder than I thought.
Speaking of harder than I thought, it turns out you can’t have an author page on Facebook without having a personal page. See… harder. And stupid. Stupid Facebook. I think I like you less than I did before. But we seem to be stuck with each other like that time I was on a long flight next to a person who had clearly forgotten his deodorant that morning and just eaten a bushel of red onions. So, I’m going from being a social media recluse to having not one, but two Facebook pages. I may as well rejoin Twitter (which I never used–not even once) and open an Instagram page while I’m at it. I don’t even know how to use Instagram. Oh, and Reddit. Racheal is always talking about how much fun Reddit is. Maybe I’ll try that too. It’ll be like being a vegan for a year and then waking up one morning to a table full of Baconators from Wendy’s (or that horrifying KFC thing where they put a bunch of bacon and cheese between two fried chickens—what was that mess called?). So that’s all I have, except for the obligatory 80s song quote…
Well he said button up and tighten your lip.
Keep a check on what you say.
Those crazy words you fling from your mouth
are going to bounce back on you some day.
—Howard Jones, Bounce Right Back (1985)
Truth be told, I’ll probably not keep much of a check on what I say. Where’s the fun in that? But I did say I was done with Facebook and now I’m not. So, I guess my crazy words have bounced back on me today.
Cheers!
