Please pass the self-esteem

A couple of months back at work, I was at a meeting where our Head of Communications made a  presentation about how our office monitors negative commentary on the web and decides whether or not to take action.  The decision hinges upon the nature of the comment and how it impacts our company.  Very simply put, for every bit of negative press or commentary that is picked up, they go through a series of yes or no questions, each yes or no influencing whether action should be taken and what that action should be.  Action is based on the impact of the comment on our business and action can also be doing nothing,  responding directly to the comment, putting out a press release or issuing a communication to our clients.

The point is that going through this exercise is supposed to force us as a company to not react in a knee-jerk fashion, but to stop, think and breathe before reacting and to think about whether responding is really in our best interests.

It's pretty good advice.


Nowadays in our don't-hold-it-in world people are sharing everything.  Oversharing is now a legit word.

With the immediate access to information and the ability to add to the dialogue simply by posting to a comment thread, having a blog or posting a status update or Tweet, the dialogue is getting bigger and bigger.


And unfortunately a lot more hostile.  


It's amazing how judgmental and downright cruel people are.  Just in the last week alone I have read vitriolic comments on 3 of my regular blogs, blogs  all written by courageous women, sharing their stories with the world.  And what do they get?


Trolls, self appointed intellectuals, making haughty comments, saying things about word usage or telling people the choices they have made in their own lives are wrong, immoral or cruel.    It's way easier to sit and make comments about other people's lives than to address your own.  


I  try to be balanced and diplomatic but also truthful in my comments but of course that is all influenced by who I am as a person, what my views are, how close to home a particular topic hits and whether or not I have had enough coffee.  Sometimes I am snarky, sometimes ultra supportive and sometimes frustrated.  That comes out in my blog, in the comments I make.  


But it works both ways. 


Look, if you write a blog and share your message with the world, you have to be prepared that some people aren't going to agree with you and are not going to like what you have to say.  As a blogger you have to be prepared for that and not get your panties in a wad every time someone doesn't agree with you.  


That's what a dialogue is, people sharing different opinions on topics.

You put your message out there, on a blog or even a Facebook status, you have to be ready that people will react to it  and you have to be prepared that people may voice their opinions about it.  And their opinions might be different to yours, because let's face it, the sum total of our baggage influences our opinions.  My life experience is different to someone else's and I bring that with me on every blog post, status update or share that I read.  


It irritates me when a blogger gets upset over his/her negative commentary.  I've had negative comments too and sure they bother me, but in the end what I am putting out there are my own opinions and experiences.  I am in the driver's seat of my life and while I value people's opinions and can even learn from others who think differently I am not so vulnerable to the opinion of others that any negative comment shakes my tree so much that I need to furiously email my friends and ask for a barrage of positive comments or post warnings on my blog that negative comments will be deleted.  Delete whatever you want it's your blog. 


What we are in life we are online.  And just like how in life you need to ignore certain people, you need to do that online as well.  Stopping and breathing are good.  Have more faith in yourself and your choices, don't be so co-dependent on what others think

I mean listen, the Web is like a huge buffet, you have lots of dishes lined up and you pick and choose the ones you want to put on your plate, you take the wonderful looking veggies and the rare roast beef and pass on the congealed potato salad.


Self esteem people.  To thine own self be true (or whatever that saying is).


And PS - this blog post has been waiting to be posted for two months!

Emily Post Doing Summersaults

Or more correctly.....Emily Post turning over in her grave.

Not really, more like me irritated because I spent the entire day collecting very tedious data and didn't talk to a soul at work the whole day and feel the need to rant to decompress.

OK, I am addicted to social media, or at least Facebook.  Everyone seems to know that about me.  I get a lot of comments about it IRL.  Colleagues tell me all the time that I am such an avid poster, and sharer.  After a while I stopped posting my posts to my colleagues because I got sick of hearing about it.

But let's face it, social media is a huge form of communication in our world today and for all it's imperfections, it ain't goin' anywhere because it offers something that other modes of communication can't.   You can be in contact with loads of people all at the same time.  It is the easiest and most effective way to maintain contact with lots of people, even people who dropped out of your life and are now back in, thanks to Facebook or Twitter (try as I might I just can't get into Twitter).   Like me, living abroad and away from most of my family and friends in the US, Facebook is the perfect way for me to keep up with friends and family and for them to keep up with me.  It's great.  Plus thanks to Facebook I now have reconnected with tons of people I went to high school with, college with and people from youth group and from all kinds of places.

Technology is a funny thing. It connects us in ways that were even 10 or 15 years ago unimaginable.  A couple of months ago while cleaning out some stuff I found some of our old cell phones, dating back to the early 2000's.  I was amazed at the look of them and how big they were (to say nothing of the 90's cellphones which were gigantic.  My first cell phone which I got around 1993 was a car phone and it was stored in it's own shoulder bag and plugged into the car's cigarette lighter.  OK, that was 20 years ago but even 20 years ago a home computer was not a given in most households.   Even cellphones from 5 years ago have changed immensely.    Five years ago cellphones were primarily for calling and texting, although texting has become viral in the past 5 or so years, but now we use cell phones for Internet and social media and for nearly the same stuff that we used to exclusively use computers for just 5 years ago.  The other day on the tram I saw someone texting from a non-smart phone, using only the numerical pad as a keyboard and I thought what a dinosaur!

Technology makes dinosaurs extinct in lightening speed.

When I was a kid I used to marvel when my parents told us there was no television when they were growing up.  I used to picture them wearing bonnets and hooking up horse to saddle and bathing in a creek, the thought of no television making the world seem so archaic and pioneer-like.  I am sure that kids born in the 1990's feel the same about computers and the Internet and I am sure that kids of Maya's generation will be incredulous when they hear we didn't all grow up with iPads and iPhones. Maya doesn't know how to make a telephone call but she can zip around iPhone and iPad applications at warp speed.

But technology also makes us forget our manners.

People will chat on cellphones in the middle of sitting in a cafe with friends or will gab on the phone loudly while sitting in public on a tram, bus or train with no thought that the people around them can not only hear what they are talking about but also the fact that they are disrupting other people around them isn't even part of our cell phone consciousness.

Remember, those of you old enough to, when you had to use a pay phone to make a telephone call in public?  Payphones in establishments were usually located out of the line of the main crowds, both so that you could actually hear your conversation but also so that your call would not disturb other people.  Remember actual phone booths?  Little boxes that you had to enter and shut in order to make your call.  Privacy and no disturbance to others by your conversation.

Now apparently with the public telephones becoming extinct, apparently so is the possibility of being in public without someone yacking on the phone in your ear.

And even in social media there are manners.  There are tons of sites dedicated to telling us how we should behave in social media, what types of things are acceptable and what are not.

I've said this before and I will say it again, what we are in life we are in social media.  Pretty much everyone I know IRL I recognize based on their online behavior and that's fine, but the written word, even if it is 140 characters or less misses a tone of voice, those words can sometimes sting or be taken the wrong way.  I've even managed to offend a few friends with my posts and those are just the ones I know about.

I really do try to think about how what I am actually saying will be perceived by those who may read it and I've deleted posts after posting them because a few seconds after I hit enter, I think, "that's not how I want to come across."

But I do think there is some basic social etiquette to social networking.  People opposed to social networking would say that it is not real life and can't take the place of real life, but I beg to differ, it is a big part of the social world these days. And we all of course have our personal preferences and tastes, but I do think it is good to think about how what you write is received.

I am a judgmental person by nature so you can bet I am not only reading and reacting to what you say, but also how you say it.  These are some of the things that I see that cause me to raise an eyebrow.  Some of them are etiquette type of issues and some are lack of technological prowess type of things but they bug me nonetheless:

1.  Typing in all caps. this one is basically on any netiquette list out there and it's because it's true.  Typing in all caps is the social networking equivalent of talking with your mouth full.  It's hard to read, it's tough on the eyes and it is the cyberpsace equivalent of shouting.  Many people feel it is lazy, but I think it is a sure sign that the person typing doesn't know how to type and just finds it easier instead of having to find the keys and push shift to make a capital, to leave them all in capitals.  I generally hide people from my newsfeed if they post on a daily basis in all caps.  It's just too hard on the eyes and PS, usually the posts contain tons of typos.  I know for people of my generation or older, who may not have learned to touch type in school (best class I ever took), this can be tough, but learning how to type is relatively easy, there are tons of online courses where you can master it usually in a few hours.  This is the world, we type, you need to know how.  We live in a technology filled world, catch up people.

2.  Chain statuses.  Actually the chain status in and of itself doesn't bother me a bit, I rarely copy and paste them and since you can recognize one right away on your newsfeed, I just skip right over them.  And there is nothing wrong with trying to call attention to something which is important to you and something that you feel passionate about.  I do it all the time and probably annoy the crap out of people too,  but I don't do it via chain status.  The ones that bug me are the ones that have the last line in them which try to guilt you into copying, the ones which say something like:  "I know only my true friends will" or "very few will actually make this their status for an hour".  That annoys me.  Even if I was a chain status-er there is no way, I would copy and paste something that has that guilt line thrown in.  It's like a guarantee of no copy and paste.

3.  Virus warnings with no fact checking.  This is a big one for me and one which is sure to get you a snarky comment from me if you do it.  About 80 percent of the virus warnings you get are hoaxes, particularly if the damage they do is not possible, like deleting your whole computer.  It is easier and takes less effort to check this before you spread the word around.  www.snopes.com provides reliable up to date information about whether or not a virus is real, a hoax or partially real and other sites do this too.  If I can take the time to check, so can you.

4.  Not responding to messages or wall posts.  I know there are a lot of people with Facebook accounts that are just not online that much and that's fine, you can usually tell whether someone is online much based on the age of their wall.  I certainly don't expect someone to respond in a day when their last post was 3 months ago.  But I always take the time to respond in a timely fashion and expect others to do the same (at least the next time they are online).  I find it horribly rude when I have sent a message or put something on someone's wall and then I see them post status after status in my newsfeed but can't even bother to give me a few words response.  Seriously, if you are not interested in me, then please do unfriend me, otherwise do me the courtesy of giving me a few words or at the very least the like button which is 1-click.  If I can't get a click out of you, then we shouldn't be Facebook friends.  Facebook has this great feature where you can see all your notifications which is a big red circle at the top of FB and you can very easily see and zip on over to all the reactions to your posts or things people have put on your wall.

5.  Not knowing the difference between Reply and Reply to All - this is more an email thing but I hate it when someone hits reply to all when it is not really relevant for all the people addressed in in the email.  Most mass addressed emails are already not relevant for the entire group of people selected and seeing the reply after reply makes it even worse, get someone whose original email is a mistake and you get tons o'crap in your email.  At my office once (and I work for a global company with about 6,000 employees), someone mistakenly sent a massive email regarding an invoice from a vendor to the entire company.  A few people replied to all saying the email was not relevant to them, and other people followed suit (because people think, if one random person answered, then I better answer too) and I counted up 250 emails in the span 12 minutes, the last 40 or so were people telling the rest of the company to stop replying to all, by replying to all.  People, it's 2012, there's no more excuses of not understanding EMAIL technology.  Figure it out.

6.  Hijacking statuses habitually.  Like conversations, sometimes status updates and their comments go off topic or head in a different direction, I am generally fine with that but there are some who continually hijack a status and start mounting inside jokes with someone else that no one else in the conversation gets or they change the topic entirely, every time they comment.  It's the equivalent of your mother calling you to come and do your homework, just when you are headed out with your friends.  Stay on topic, if you have other questions or other things to say, put a post on my wall or message me.

5.  The rapid fire messages (text, chat, social media, email).  This makes me crazy when I am chatting with someone on skype or facebook and they pepper me with a zillion different messages before I have a chance to respond.  So I am typing the answer to the first question and they are on question 6.  I am generally not in favor of chatting because of this but people don't get that you can sometimes be called away from a computer.  Chatting is like a conversation, it should be interactive.  You say something, I say something, your turn, my turn.

So, those are the things that bug me, there I said it.

It Creeps In

The other day while walking in an American mall a guy trying to offer me a free sample of hair gel asked me if I was European.  When I inquired as to why this guy thought I was from the Eurozone, without skipping a beat he said I just had a European look to me and that my clothes and style just reeked of Europe. A scam?  Maybe.  A guy wanting me to buy hair gel?  Most definitely.  Still, what I found ironic about this 20 second exchange is that no European would ever make me for a European.  When in Europe, I reek American and as I have just discovered that the opposite is true now across the pond.    

Apparently I stick out like a sore thumb where ever I go. 

The past week I traveled alone to the US, for a family wedding and then spent a few days with a very close friend.  I think the last time I traveled alone in the US, purely for vacation was when I was single.  While I certainly missed having my family with me, I don't think I would have contemplated some of these things if I wasn't alone.  I bummed around, I shopped, I lunched, I had cocktails without having to worry about relieving a babysitter or cooking, making lunch or dinner.  I tried to sleep in (but alas that is gone, some changes that parenthood brings about just don't come back).  

It was great having a break, having no one to answer to except myself but more often than not I yearned for Maya's familiar pattering around the house, for our family mornings lazing around in bed and for talking with my husband.  It sounds lame but normally one of our favorite places to eat when we are in the US is at PF Chang's and I was rubbing it in before I left that I was going to eat there a bunch of times but in the end, didn't end up going there at all.  It just didn't feel right to go there without Leo, he loves it so much, I just couldn't go there and enjoy that without him.  

When you live abroad you always feel the pull of two homes.  One is the country you were born in, where everything makes sense, seems familiar, where you just fit, where there are no cultural or linguistic barriers, where you get the jokes, the references and just are a part of the rhythm of the place.  The other, your adopted home, where you live your life, where your family and the people that mean the most to you in the world live.  It's full of different languages and references, a different culture, one where you often feel on display, you don't get the jokes, you stick out as the immigrant, the different one, the one that doesn't get it, the one after the small talk at parties is done, you invariably find yourself being truly a stranger in a strange land.  A person that understands at best 80% of the world you inhabit. 

This year marks my 15th year of living abroad.  What can I say, it gets easier and it doesn't get easier.  I have lived in two countries, learned two languages (or at least learned to butcher two other languages).  And I can say that even after 15 years, 20% of my life is in kind of a grey area.  Whether it is sitting in a meeting, translating in my head and making sure that anything I say doesn't sound stupid or just feeling slightly on the outside in many conversations.  It's a strange feeling. 

While I certainly feel at home in the Netherlands and despite my protests my Dutch is good enough to deal with any situation (honorable mention must go to me dealing with Maya's school and therapy in Dutch), I am always pulled across the pond, in everything.  My family always makes a little fun of me since I am always on Facebook.  But it's true, Facebook keeps me connected and from feeling isolated.  It makes living abroad much more bearable, because I can come home and have a familiar dialogue, share a couple of jokes or whatever.  Certainly it is not the same as flesh and blood contact but it does keep that 20% manageable for me.  

It's interesting to me that over the years that those very things about Dutch society that make me want to scream (the lack of service, the mediocrity), when in the presence of their polar opposite in America, I find that some of those things are now irritating to me.  One thing which really bugged the crap out of me this time was the invariable 5 minute interrogation you have to go through before you buy something in the US.  It's absolutely astounding the amount of questions they ask you.  It goes like this:

Sales person:  Did you find everything okay today?

Moi:  Yes, thank you.

Sales person:  Are you going to put this on your 'Name of store' charge card today?

Moi:  No, that's okay.

Sales person:  Do you have a 'Name of store' charge card?  If you apply you can save an extra 15% on your purchase today.

Moi:  No (and if I am feeling chatty I interject that I live in Europe and cannot)

Sales Person:  Can I have a local phone number (or zip code)

Moi:  Again, I live in Europe and don't have a local phone number or zip code

Sales Person:  Can I get your email address?

Moi:  No, if I want emails from you daily then I will sign up via your website

And all this is before they ring up one thing.  And now this happens at each and every store you visit.  It used to be just the department stores but with the exception of Target and CVS every store I visited put me through a similar routine.  I've had job interviews that didn't last this long.  Next time I go to the US I am going to laminate a placard and just hold it out.  

This is something which has changed in me over time.  My first 5-10 years of living abroad always saw trips home as an oasis, a place where everything made sense, where I just understood everything.  I was enchanted, enamored by the larger variety of things, from clothes, shoes, little gadgets, restaurants.  And I do still like all those things.  

I think the thing that gets to me the most is the excess.  I constantly rail over here about the lack of convenience here, that most stores on most days close at 6.00 PM, that there isn't a wide variety of things and if your kid needs a protractor and doesn't tell you this before 9.00 on a weeknight you are totally screwed.  Take out food is woefully 20 years behind over here (still mostly burgers, pizza).  But when I am over there I see things on the menu like "Deep Friend Macaroni and Cheese" and on the one hand wonder why the hell does the world need that?  If this were 15 years ago, I still would never order it but it wouldn't be a what's-wrong-with-American-society-moment either.  

After 15 years of living abroad I have started to realize that I am becoming a hybrid.  A mix of capitalism and socialism, of here and there and that although I spend a fair amount of time clinging to being an American that without even trying, I am a little bit of a Euro too.  

Shiny Happy People

The last couple of weeks on Facebook I have been enjoying seeing photos of friends' kids going to prom, graduating high school, finishing first years of college, even graduating pre-school (yes, there is such a thing now....don't get me started). In short, this time of year, the end of the proverbial school year (at least for those in the US, we Europeans have another month to go) is a time of transitions and a lot of achievement.  It is the time when we move onto new phases in our life, the next grade, the next step or a total change.  I still remember my own high school graduation, the weeks leading up to it were such a whirlwind, the end of an era, in some ways the end of childhood and a time when all possibilities were completely open.  I had a driver's license but wasn't yet in the driver's seat of my own life, so to speak.  Up until that point my parents, and particularly my dad were steering the ship.  That summer between high school and the first year of college was fantastic for me.  The world was there for the taking and although I had the feeling of freedom at other times throughout my life, I didn't have it in such unabashed abundance as I did that summer between high school and college.  I spent most of the entire summer on the Monongahela River with friends from high school, boating, swimming, hanging out, laughing and without a care in the world.  We were all taking the next step of our lives, together but separately and somehow that summer felt like both the beginning and the end of something and I enjoyed it with reckless abandon.

Now that I am all grown up with a daughter of my own, I of course want those same things for her. I so much want her to have great friends and a world of possibilities open to her.  I want her to have many of those kinds of summers spent, laying at the bank of a river, looking up at lightening bugs, talking about her dreams for the future, driving with the top down, music blaring.   Maya's autism doesn't define her but over the last  last few weeks when I have been looking at beautiful young women and men at their proms and graduations, part of me can't help but wonder if that is all in Maya's future?  Maya is very different from these young men and women I see in these photos, many of whom look an awful lot like the kids I went to high school with.  I am pretty sure she will still carry her resemblance to me into adolescence but I wonder if she will be able to experience the fun, the freedom and the wonder of being on the cusp of adulthood with all doors open to her?

I have said it many times before but for me as the parent of a child on the autistic spectrum it is somehow easier not to think too long term.  We think of this school year, the months ahead and try to stay in the moment, helping and focusing on each day, hoping that all those tiny, minuscule pieces will take shape into a big picture.  Still there are times when I can't help myself but to think of the longer road ahead.  Will she go to the prom (for the record I didn't, and I am fine), but will she have a free range of choices open to her, and  be bound only by her own desires and ambitions?  Or will her limitations define her freedoms and choices?  At the moment I would just be happy if she would start reading.

This week Maya has been at camp which is organized by her school.  It is an annual event where the kids go to a vacation park in the area together with school staff for 5 days.  For us, this is the first time that Leo and I have both been separated from Maya for this long a period.  We have spent nights away from her before and Leo and I have separately been away from home for a week at a time, but this is the first time she is away from both of us for so long.  She is doing great there, and having a fantastic time like I anticipated.  It is harder for me to be away from her than for her to be away from us.  But that is as it should be.

Today on the way into work, as I was watching the trees and then the sights of the city of Amsterdam pass by quickly on the tram, I was thinking about all I have learned from this beautiful, wonderful, happy little creature.  And while I know that she is much more than the sum of her autistic parts, I do think her autism has helped me to learn some beautiful truths that if she were a typically developing child I might only see through my peripheral vision.

My daughter has one of the sunniest dispositions of anyone I have ever met.  She is a caring, sweet, affectionate child who will always make the best of the circumstances she is in.  She is a child that knows how to make the most of a moment, to really live in it and she can find joy in the tiniest of things.  And because she can find it there, I also find joy in thousands of little moments with her.  Watching her play with her stuffed animals and telling them how proud she is of them and comforting them when she pretends they are scared or sad or bringing them all downstairs and putting them in a circle on the living room floor and having a story time with them.

We have all in some way been influenced by our own upbringing and bring that into our parenting either voluntarily or involuntarily.  I certainly recognize my parents in some of my parenting and there are times when something comes out of my mouth and I am taken aback because it is my mother or my father.  My parents were loving people but they, like many people of their generation had a tough time showing affection.  As a kid I felt starved for affection, particularly from my mother.  I knew she loved me  but once in a while I longed for her to make the display.  For my grandmother that always came so easy, she hugged and kissed us freely and I can still feel the touch of her delicate thumb stroking my hand as she held my hand in hers.  I can still feel the touch of my dad's tickle on my face as he used to do when he woke me up for school.  I always wanted my mom to grab my hand or put her arm around me for no reason at all, rather than just to keep me safe from traffic or to steer me in a direction.  She showed me her love in other ways but when I had Maya I was determined not to make her want for that and I have never held back any affection from her.   And because of that she is demonstrative too.  And as child on the autistic spectrum, Maya indeed has difficulty reading social cues but if you ask her how does she show someone she loves them she says (and often just does it), by holding hands or tickling someone's face or giving them a kiss.  And she does that freely, it's second nature to her.  She is a comforter.  On Monday when the bus was leaving for camp one of the little girls in Maya's class was crying her eyes out for her mom, having a little bout of separation anxiety and seeing her mom waving frantically at her was upsetting her more.  Maya was sitting in back of this little girl and she was really wailing at one point.  Maya got out of her seat, opened her backpack, took a stuffed animal out of it and walked one seat in front.  She patted the little girl on the head and stroked her hair and when the little girl looked to see who was touching her, Maya hugged her, sat down next to her and held her hand.  Maya may have trouble learning lots of things but she knows how to recognize when someone is sad and her automatic instinct is to try and give comfort.  My girl is a nurturer.  

Also she has amazing endurance.  The world is a scary place for her, she often has to fight her own natural instincts and urges in order to do things as she is expected to.  Each time she listens, each time she follows directions, each time she does what she is told, each time she looks someone in the eye when she talks to them, each time she sits in a circle and participates with other kids, each time she allows all eyes to be upon her without hiding under the table she is going against her own natural urges and instincts.  It's a battle of sorts and she wages war on it every day.  Many neurotypical people I know simply just accept and acquiesce those parts of themselves they wish they could change and say things like, I know I should be more (or less) X, but that's just me.  My daughter wages that battle every day, turning away from her own nature and fighting her way into her own developmental milestones.  If that is not endurance, I don't know what is. 

She has taught me a deeper meaning of patience and the true power that comes with building someone up rather than tearing them down.  With a kid like Maya everything has to be done in her own time.  She does not respond well to pressure, particularly time pressure.  Actually putting pressure on her has the opposite effect.  She needs the time and the room in order to do what is expected of her.  I've learned that it is better to just give her the space she needs to understand what is expected of her and to encourage her when she is insecure than to put pressure on her ('we need to go now').  This is not always easy for me because let's face it, whether we like it or not, life is at least somewhat about time and deadlines.  And I don't succeed 100% of the time.  Some days I am less patient and tolerant and  just want to 'get there.' Some days I lose my patience with her and do exactly what I know is counterproductive.  But a lot of times I don't, a lot of times I encourage Maya's success by giving her that space, by going against my own nature so that she can succeed and have the confidence that comes through doing.  

So, I don't know if she will ever be one of those shiny happy kids that wins MVP or is Prom Queen or graduates with Honors or gets a fantastic job.  I don't know if she will ever experience the freedom of young adulthood or be able to bask in a world of possibilities open to her.  But my daughter shines as brightly as any child and she has wonderful gifts within her.

That is something to be enormously proud of and I am.

Social Life State of the Union

The other day I was catching up with reading all my regular blogs and I came across a post from Zendette that I haven't been able to get out of my head, check it out here.  The article was a poignant account about how much her life has changed since she had kids.  She for instance talks about that she and her husband never knew any of their neighbors until she had kids and how much their social life has changed since becoming parents.  She lives in Israel, a country where you almost literally don't exist until you have kids.  Having lived in Israel myself for 5+ years the whole thing gave me a chuckle.  I commented, as I frequently do, saying that in the Netherlands the situation is vastly different.  Israel is an absolutely fantastic society to raise children in.  There is a freedom for children in Israel like none I have ever experienced anywhere else.  Why that is would make an interesting post but that is not what I want to talk about today.  This blog post has made me think a lot about friendships and socializing in the social media age (is it an age?) and of course the state of my own social life.

When I was younger, in my twenties and thirties, my social life was the center of my universe.  I have always had a wide group of friends in different circles and my life was always ruled by what was going on tonight. Like many other people my friends were like family to me and my life revolved around whatever party or happening was going on. I went out most nights of the week Of course being in my twenties, bars were often my destination but I also went out a lot to movies, restaurants, and as a season ticket holder of the symphony, public theater and Broadway series in Pittsburgh I had a rich cultural life as well.  In my twenties I was still in university so there were always things going on, so my social calendar was pretty full.

When I turned 30 I moved to Israel and started a new adventure in my life.  The immigrant experience can be difficult and lonely in a lot of things, having to navigate a new country, often a new language and having to try to find your way in a "system" which is unfamiliar can be extremely hard on one's psyche.  Even figuring out things like how to pay your electric bills, banking and the health care system can be challenging and frustrating and you often measure your immigrant life against your former life where because you were familiar with everything "at home" often made home seem so easy and being abroad so difficult.  Forming bonds with people going through the same experience can form bonds which are very strong.  I think it is in some way similar to the bond people serving together in the military must feel.  You are far away from everything and everyone familiar going through a shared experience.  In many ways that situation forms unbreakable bonds for those who go through it together and even after returning to your old life, and even if you never see each other again, the people you go through those life changing experiences with become part of your DNA in a way that cannot be duplicated in other situations.  I made some amazing friends during my time in Israel, people who touched my life and changed me in ways I could have never imagined.  I am forever grateful to those people (they know who they are).  With that adventure came a whole host of new friendships, some of the closest of my life and my social life in Israel was pretty full, although most of my friends were immigrants like me, so there was kind of a revolving door aspect to it as people were always deciding to go back home too.  After 3 or 4 years of this, I started to get dizzy on the merry-go-round.  It got so exhausting forming tight bonds with people and bringing them into your life, feeling so close and then so sad when they decided to go back home.  After a while for me it became exhausting to form close friendships and build my life in Israel around them, only knowing that in a year's time you have to start all over again.  After a few years of this I decided to stop it and scaled back forming close bonds with immigrants.  I had a few Israeli friends and they were always wonderful but these bonds were harder to form, sharing less in common.  After about 3 years in Israel I had a few close Israeli friends but I scaled back my socializing considerably preferring not to be on an endless cycle of meeting, bonding and losing people which was so prevalent in the English speaking community in Israel.  Therefore my life became a lot quieter, although to be honest I didn't mind.  I loved Tel Aviv, I had a great job and a few good friends.

Leo and I got married soon after I arrived in the Netherlands.  His friends and family were very kind to me but it was definitely harder to form attachments here.  The Dutch, as I have mentioned in other posts are a polite and kind people, but they hold you at arm's length and it is difficult (at least I found it difficult) to make friends. I think part of the issue was also that I had Leo, we were married and in love and trying to start a family, so I also didn't look that much for friendships and I was probably less willing to invest in those relationships since things were so wonderful for Leo and I.  Our life was perfect as it was. I found a job easily and I became pregnant about 8 months after we got married.  My pregnancy was difficult, I was in and out of the hospital for the first half and then Maya came along and I was your typical euphoric, sleep deprived and confused young mother.  My baby became my life and I traveled from milestone to milestone a flurry of over analysing how much she ate, slept, peed, pooped, is she hot? is she cold? is that a rash? we need diapers, OMG is she teething, should we call the doctor, etc., etc. and I am quite sure that I talked about those things openly with people as well -- talk about your turn off.  Then I moved into the world of trying to combine (nearly) full time work with motherhood.  Forming friendships was the last thing on my mind, I didn't have the time to invest in them.  For the first two years of Maya's life I was in a quest for nothing other than sleep.

I do think that life evolves in a natural cycle that when you are creating and raising your family and particularly when you are slightly older doing it, that you have less room in your life for friends and socializing.  And maybe even less desire too.  A decade ago the top of a weekend with no plans was a weekend I didn't look forward too and now almost the opposite is true.  I hate weekends where we are overscheduled (actually we hardly ever do that anymore) and weekends where from Friday night until Sunday night with nothing on the horizon are anticipated by me with unabashed joy.  There are times however, that I feel guilty about my love affair with solitude and feel like I should be making more of an effort to have a more active social life.  I see colleagues or friends who somehow effortlessly combine working, parenting, taking care of a house with full social lives.  I admire those women, and have the fleeting moment of envy once in a while but it really stops there.  I admire them the same way I admire athletes.  I respect what they do but wouldn't want to be them if my life depended on it.

How bad is it that Facebook is just my speed for socializing?  On it I am connected to most of my close friends and many others who I have re-connected with, like people from high school, childhood friends, college, former work friends, close and extended family members and even some people that I know by association.  I can be on it as much as I want, I have fascinating discussions, get information on a lot of things that I wouldn't find by myself and can connect with people who mean a lot to me?  Someone at work said to me that Facebook is only virtual socializing and cannot replace being in the same room with flesh and blood people.  I do agree it is not the same but it is the perfect compromise for me.  As a working mom trying to balance and have it all, I just don't have the time or the desire to invest in a social life, let's face it, the precious little time I get to myself, I'd rather be sleeping or watching tv reading.  With FB, I get some time with my friends, I find it easier to maintain the distance with my friends on Facebook since we can easily have interaction every day if we want to despite things like geography, time zones, etc.

Sometimes I think it would be better for Maya maybe if Leo and were a little more social.  I sometimes think of what we are teaching her by enjoying our solitude and preferring that over parties and social adventures, but for myself mostly not.  She already has social challenges and I sometimes wonder if we are somehow standing in the way of her development by preferring our quiet way of life over a busy social calendar.  On the other hand, I know plenty of insecure people that cannot face doing things on their own, being quiet with one's self and have to have 'ceaseless action' in order to feel fulfilled.  I have always been very grateful that I can enjoy myself without a crowd and maybe for Maya, who definitely does have issues with socializing, maybe for her it is important to learn that as well.

Following Linkedin's Advice

Only friend people you are sure you know.

Linkedin, a professional social networking site always tells you this.  They tell you that you should only connect to people you are sure you know.  They believe in this advice so much that if you try to connect to someone you need to tell them how you know the person, and if you haven't worked together, done business togehter or are a friend, then it is 'see you later Charlie'. Turns out, this is pretty sound advice.


I admit it, I am a Facebook junkie.  I am on Facebook every single day, checking my friends' news feeds, things they post, statuses, etc.  I post something nearly every day, some days many things.  I am on Facebook so much that even some of my colleagues at work have commented on how much I am posting. 


As someone who lives abroad, far away from the many people who are near and dear, Facebook has become like a lifeline home, a way that I can have frequent contact with many friends and family who are far away.  It's great that you can see photos and other posts and comment on them and share little snippets.  It helps me be far away without feeling far away and that is what I love about Facebook.  It brings home and many people I really love a lot closer. 


I also love that I have been able to reestablish contact with people who fell off the radar eons ago.  I am friends with people that I haven't seen since elementary or middle school, distant relatives who I haven't seen in years, friends and acquaintances from high school, college, youth group, former colleagues and a lot of close friends and of course my family.


I frequently break some FB rules, particularly the ones about posting mundane status updates, but heck, I don't care, it's for fun.  I also often look at friends profiles, to see their photos or what they post about and I admit it I do on occasion look to see how many friends people have and if I am really bored, I sometimes look at who they are friends with to see if I know anyone.


I do guard my FB privacy vigilently, although I post every day I only post to friends and sometimes even restrict certain posts from appearing in certain people's news feeds.  I think a lot about the messages I am sending and how they will be perceived and try as much as possible to choose my audience accordingly.  Of course anyone connected to me can see my posts by going to my profile and seeing my wall, so it is not so private, but I always think that people are probably not interested in me enough to stalk my wall to see what I am posting if it doesn't appear in their news feed.  I kind of think this theory is close to true since people whose news feeds I don't routinely publish to also never comment on my posts.  I am just the boring FB girl who posts about soup ladels.  No use going to her profile to see tons o'photos of her kid and her silly political leanings, right?


Not really.


Over the past day or two I heard from a friend that someone whose friend request I accepted a week or two ago is now approaching my friends to try and be friends with them. This person is not someone that I am even 100% sure that I know.  This person sent me a couple of friend requests, the first couple I ignored because I was sure I didn't know her, but then I saw we have about 30 friends in common and I started thinking that maybe I did know her, but perhaps she is using her married name.  So I accept the friend request. Now I find out that this person is approaching my friends and trying to friend them, explaining that she is a friend of mine, which has led my friends to WTH me more than once.  I cannot imagine why this person would be approaching my friends, even if you are searching for neighbors in Farmville, this just seems over the line, no?


 Like I said, I am a Facebook junkie but I would never send a friend request to a total stranger just because they are a friend of my friend, particularly if my friend was someone I don't know very well. 


The next time I get a friend request in FB, I am applying the Linkedin principle and going to call up the Linkedin connection request in my mind and fill in the little form in my head and if I can't check a box on how I know the person, then if none of the boxes are checked, sorry Charlie.

Verbs ala Facebook , the Politics of Unfriending and my own Facebook report card

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about Facebook. I actually, although not sure I want to admit this spend an awful lot of my downtime on Facebook. It has sort of become my background noise without the noise. A large percentage of time that I am at home I have a FB tab running on my computer. I'm not always on, but there it is like the radio playing in the background (sorry I mean iPod). On the one hand I am sometimes completely bowled over by what a phenomenon Facebook is. I am now 'friends' with more people from high school than the amount of actual friends I actually had when I was in high school (ahhh, the good old days when telephones had cords and you had to get up to change the channel). To me the most interesting aspect about this whole social media phenomenon is how it has created new verbs. Facebook is now a noun but also a verb:


Are you on Facebook? (noun)
I am Facebooking (verb)


Facebook and other social networking sites like My Space, Friendster, the favorite of Dutch teeny boppers, Hyves and the most hated by me Twitter have spawned other verbs as well.


Friending is now clearly a verb. Following while always a verb, now has a new meaning words which have taken on new meaning in cyberspace.


Although to be fair to Twitter, really, where else can you see Demi Moore, Lindsay Lohan and one of those Kardashian chicks cat fight in public? I am a normal person who can't get into Bungalow 8 or the Ivy so, Twitter is the only other option to see first hand celebrity idiocy (as opposed to the press, which is second hand celebrity idiocy). Okay I guess Twitter does have a purpose. Forgive me all you Twits, oops, I mean Twitter fans.


Anyhoo, for the last two weeks or so I have been giving FB a lot of thought. I love FB, it allows me to keep track of friends and family without writing emails (and exacerbating my carpal tunnel), enjoy little snippets, exchange ideas, get alerted to news and other cool stuff and shamelessly pontificate which is my favorite non-guilty pleasure. I love reading what my friends are up to, I love seeing how people I have not been in touch with since high school have grown up. I love, love, love seeing people's photos and I really love seeing what people in my cyber circle post about. You learn a lot from it, like what is important to people, what are their passions, what kind of issues and things matter to them. Also because of cyber space in some way people are freer about their affections and emotions than they are sometimes in person. People (including me) easily status their love for their kids, parents, brothers, sisters, friends, dogs. FB to me is sometimes like a big sociological hand knitted sweater, where each post, status and comment is some intricate knit 1 pearl 2 stitch.


There are however some FB habits which rub me the wrong way. The only two I will mention, because I think they are truly distasteful and show a real lack of manners and cross the line of good taste. The first is that of the friend-stalker. This is someone you have friended that uses your status and wall as a way to keep tabs on you or your other friends in common and then uses the information 'innocently'. I have had one such friend, let's call he/she 'Friend X'. We have some people in common, but this particular friend has had a falling out with the others, who are also my friends but also my FB friends, let's call them Friends YZ. So Friends YZ do not have very strict privacy settings on their profiles and therefore this allows end X to view loads of information about Friends YZ without actually being friended (there's that verb again) to each other. For example when I have seen Friends YZ they have once in a while posted a status update about our activities, or they send me a post to my wall about it. Friend X sees said postings and then innocently asks me on the phone, what did you do yesterday? Me trying to be tactful and not stir up Friend X's hurt feelings over the lost friendship with Friends XY says not much and then gets hit with the 'well didn't you go out to dinner with friends XY? So not only has friend X been busy practicing for his/her guest starring stint on Cold Case, but now my attempt to be tactful and not hurt Friend X's feelings has gotten me in trouble, when all I was trying to do was spare Friend X's feelings. Now due to his/her stalking, I get branded as a liar. I am as curious as they come and I often look at friends profiles to see what they are up to, but 'using' information to trap someone is a bridge too far in my opinion.


The other one is the using FB to air your dirty laundry, particularly couples airing their dirty laundry via status, posts, etc. Luckily I haven't seen that too often but from time to time it does occur. Thankfully the offenders have not been people from my own inner circle but more from the periphery, but still, I find the whole thing distasteful. Nearly anyone can post some passive aggressive status probably in search of support from their FB circle and as much as I really try not to do that, I do look the other way when I see it and chalk it up to friends having a bad day, and we all need out outlets, right? But I draw the line at directly or pretend-passively slamming someone via status. OK, you broke up, you're angry, your working the 7 stages of grief, I get it. Call up your girlfriends and do this over cocktails but please don't put it out there in your cyberspace world. Many people you are connected to are not in your inner circle, do not know the details and you just come off looking spiteful, plus it makes me angry that you are slamming a friend of mine. I am protective of my friends. A similar thing happened to me recently and for the very first time, I ended up unfriending someone from FB for the first time.


Unfriending - yet another new verb courtesy of FB!


I posted about my unfriending situation and amazingly that drew a lot of comments from my friends, all messages of support. Some people shared their own experiences of unfriending. I was literally amazed. I am an avid FB status updater. My statuses teeter on the boring, what am I doing today kind of things interspersed with occasional humor or marginally interesting stories which garner comments from my friends which I really enjoy.


To be honest, I am always a little envious of people who get loads of comments from every post as many of my posts end up commentless (sigh). I have one friend who literally posts very creative, funny statuses and she literally gets 25-30 comments each one. I finally had to drop her from my regular news feed because, 1. I was spending so much time reading all those comments that I was not getting anything done and 2. Yes, I admit it, I am a little envious of all the attention via comment (is that so WROOOOONG?). Actually this friend hosts a website helping people create interesting status which will garner lots of comments from your FB community (there are many such sites out there believe it or not). Most of my other FB friends who get zillions of comments on their posts I have noticed are people who have big families or connected to their mom's, who comment on every single post. In a strange way FB is kind of like a big popularity contest, how many friends do you have (too little, too many), how much do you post, do you get lots of comments? Life really is like high school.


Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, unfriending. Apparently unfriending is an acceptable practice. The great part about it is that it is not confrontational, the person you unfriend does not get a notification of the unfriending, the person just subtly disappears from your news feed and vice versa and if they try to search for you in their friend list, they will not see you anymore and if they search for you on FB, they will see you are not connected anymore. But how many times do you actually do that? When you think about it, unfriending is kind of the cyberspace equivalent of not returning a phone call. After I received all these comments from my friends showing their support over my unfriending, I Googled unfriending and there is a cornucopia of articles on the topic that also unequivocally support unfriending as totally and completely acceptable FB etiquette. Miss Manners approves of unfriending (direct object now isn't it?)


Actually after this experience, I have now actually unfriended the stalker too (I hope they don't notice).


There are literally tons of articles on Facebook etiquette which cover loads of topics like the rules for friending and unfriending, how many friends should you have, what you should and should not post on a wall. Interestingly enough I was pleased to find that in most categories I am more than acceptable Facebooker. I have neither too many, nor too little friends. The majority of my friends are either friends, family members, colleagues, friends from college and high school, even elementary school, a few friends of friends, but I am not friends with anyone that I have never met at least once and all but one are people I have 'known' at least some time in my life. I am connected to my boss, and also to some people who report to me. I post to the appropriate places (wall/inbox) although I do violate some of the rules on statuses since I do post about mundane things frequently (but then again, what is really mundane?).


All in all, my overall Facebook GPA? I'd say 3.4. Don't agree? Well there's always the option to unfriend me.