Hurray for Facebook!

I am usually a very organized, methodical kind of person. When it comes to blogging…NOT! Maybe that is my writing style in general. I am definitely a SOP writer. This means a ‘seat-of-the-pants’ writer. A story comes to mind and I start writing. As it unfolds, twists and takes over my life, I get it down ‘on laptop’. My blogging takes on the same form. So, when you come to read my posts, you don’t know what you’ll find…and I guess I kind of like it that way. All of life is so planned and full of ‘have-to’ type stuff…why not have a little fun and excitement every once in awhile?

Every since I went back on Facebook again, I have been amazed at the way you can reach out to people. I know my children think I was raised in the Dark Ages, but we did have a telephone, hooked to the wall and we did have a television set. It was even in color and weighed about 500 pounds. I thought we were pretty big-time. But…when I was growing up, you generally still wrote a letter if you wanted to communicate with someone far away. You could call, but that was for VERY special occasions.

I wrote many letters in my pre-teen and teen years. I wrote my paternal grandmother at least monthly and most definitely every time she wrote me. I had an aunt that I wrote very frequently and I had childhood and teenage friends that I wrote for many years. It was always exciting to get that letter or card in the mail. I would recognize the handwriting and usually tear the envelope open on the way to the house, so anxious to read about what was happening in their lives.

Childhood friends were married, we shared pictures of our children. My grandmother always received the latest pictures in the mail. There is a huge part of me that misses that form of communication. This younger generation will never know the simplicity of writing a letter, the excitement of it, that pile of cherished pages.

Facebook has given me the opportunity to reconnect with some of those childhood friends. I’ve been able to see pictures of their spouses, children and now grandchildren. Thirty plus years have come and gone…and WOW, they had a life as well! So many of them moved away from the small town we attended school in. Most have had pretty exciting lives compared to mine. Staying at home and raising children is rather ‘blah’ when stood up next to…well, almost anything probably! But it is what I chose to do, wanted to do and loved doing.

So, here is a positive vote for social media. Like everything in this life it has its good aspects and the not-so-good. Right now I’m mostly enjoying the good ones.

My family in the 1970’s. This ‘me’ is what some friends may remember.