The Mass Holiday Text Message

Merry Christmas! I hope that you had a lovely day.

I am a big fan of "keeping in touch", so I love hearing from friends and family who I may not see or hear from on a regular basis. That said, holidays were once a great opportunity to make such connections. I remember a time (before everyone and their 8 year old kid had a cell phone) when people actually sent cards, made phone calls, and visited one another to spread holiday cheer.

Over the past three to four years, this trend has shifted towards embracing the "Mass Holiday Text Message". Hmmm... On one hand, it is nice to send and receive holiday cheer, and texting makes it practical to reach out to all of the people you care about (It's just not possible to visit or call everyone). On the other hand, text messages cost money, and it's not really fun to get the same message 500 times. I am more than willing to spend ten cents to receive a text message that was sent to me, personally, but it is a little bit annoying to buy hundreds of one liners that went out to every number in one's phone.

In the hierarchy of friendship, I'd say that the people you spend time with rank highest, then those who you call, then those who get a personalized text, then the generic text. People who mail cards get cool points for being extra classy grown-ups...I'm not there yet, but I hope that 2009 is my year!

The added confusion of sending/receiving the mass text is for people who change their numbers, or lose/break/upgrade phones often. If you choose to send a non-personalized mass text, please make sure that you sign your name to the end of your message to identify yourself (in case the recipient doesn't have your number saved in their phone), and to avoid awkward conversations that start with: "Hi, I just got a 'Happy Holiday's to you and yours' text from this number..."

Some direction

So here I am, with this jazzy blog and very few posts. I've spent the past few days exploring some established blogs out here, trying to figure out what makes the really good ones so inspired and enjoyable. I guess the most important thing is to have some direction. Some people blog as an outlet for whatever randomness is on their minds, some like to share personal stories, some are inspired by food/music/nostalgia/comedy/art/gossip(etc.), while others appreciate a meeting of minds and opinions to discuss "real" issues. Many, many factors make a great blog, and I've compiled a list of my faves over there -------> in the side bar.

I guess that in order to get some semblance of coherency and direction, I'll focus this here blog on my fascination with "growing up". Why on earth does traditional media always feed us "Coming of Age" tales about people under 21? Seriously? In what world is a 21-year-old "of age"? I'm knocking on 30, and the only two reasons a sane person would define me as a grown-up are that I'm old enough to drink (who cares?) and I pay my own bills (except when I'm on a date...I a'int payin'!, lol). So I ask myself...why don't I consider myself an "adult"? What characteristics must one display, to truly be "grown-up", "adult", "mature", etc.? In what situations is it ok to act like a child? What does it mean to act like a child? If a lifespan is around 85 years, then shouldn't it technically still be ok to be closer to child than adult? Or is "adult" just an in-between place after "baby" and before "old"? Who knows.

In any case, there are DEFINITELY certain behaviors that are just not ok at my age, and certain indicators that I'm more grown up than I like to admit. I will dedicate the majority of this blog to rambling on about various topics that relate to our inevitable maturation process, highlighting my personal change in outlook over different stages of my life.

A few topics to look forward to:
(mostly to serve as a memory jog for myself when I'm trying to decide what to write about.)

1. MTV vs. VH1, Billboard vs. NPR
2. Stuff that is fun and/or randomly makes me happy
3. Family/Friend stuffs
4. Making decisions
5. Time machine discoveries like newspapers and libraries
6. Jobs vs. Careers
7. Current events/activism
8. Health, fitness, nutrition
9. Wasting time +/or money
10. "The youth"
11. Goals and success
12. "The Scene" ugh...
13. Things that I refuse to understand because they are just dumb...
14. Issues and insecurities
15. Affection and creepiness
16. Archetypes, social norms, and rites of passage
17. Expectations and standards
18. Racial stuff
19. Nostalgia
20. Things that I would like to understand, but don't.
21. Use of language and other communication tools

FYI-If you end up reading a lot of my entries, you'll see a lot of random commas, "Quotation Marks", (Parentheses), numbered lists, /es, ...'s (I don't like the word ellipses, but I love the dots) ..., and BoldItalic words and phrases. These are things that make me happy, even if they are unnecessary or grammatically misused. If it annoys you, I'm (kind of) sorry, but it's my blog so it doesn't really matter. I love you, though! Thanks for reading :)

Ummm...

So Monica made me turn my computer back on after I shut it down. 3 hours later, it's still on, so here I am. I guess I'll just ramble for a while until I get sleepy.

Man, it's gonna take a minute to get into this blogging thing. I guess the only thing worth noting is that I have a newly found love of newspapers and the library. Ok, that's me for the night.

PEACE!