I need something of a distraction from work, which is going to send me to an early grave, at the moment. I really am trying to stay away from social media. That began as a thing for Lent. I always try to give up something that I am horribly addicted to, and things go great for a week until I crash and burn. This year has been a bit different. I have failed at staying completely away, but I am spending comparatively very little time on social media, mostly when I just surf to Facebook out of force of habit, compared to where I had been. Anyways, it has made me see that I really don't need to update my status continuously and tweet every little thing. The one thing that I have sort of missed is that I know people out there have had birthdays that I have missed. Sorry, people. I feel like a bad friend.
Not checking up on the lives of everyone on Facebook, though, has given me more opportunity to do other things like making a Spotify playlist of every song in the Breaking Bad series and, you know, work. It has also made me sort of antsy to write, since I am not getting in my quota of status updates. Of course, I'm never really at a loss for what to write about. What I do lack are ideas to write on that would be interesting enough for anyone else to read. I have plenty to say about the press coverage of this missing plane, Russia just up and saying they are taking Crimea back, how ridiculous the Obama-care rollout is, but oof! Really, who cares what I think about those things and you can turn on any news channel and get a billion different opinions on them.
Not all of you realize, however, that I have been blogging nonsense since before someone invented the word "blog". It started as a sort of newsletter home to friends and relatives while I was going to school in France. I'd send off a little pack of onion skin paper par avion that my father would copy and distribute. After France, I kept it up for a while at Northwestern. Then came the advent of the World Wide Web, and it wasn't because I now had a far more accessible channel with which to distribute my worldly wisdom that I stopped copying and sending out my newsletter. It was because I was way too busy playing Farmville.
Honestly, it is probably for the very reason that "blogging" has become so accessible that it's value, its interest, has dramatically declined. Before when I wanted to describe what was going on, the things I found interesting, my experiences - I had to personally handwrite everything and mail it, from France, perhaps, which was relatively expensive. With my budget in France each page was measured in francs, each word in centimes, so what I had to say had best be of some value to someone. (In contrast already I've just written over 500 words without saying much at all.) It became easier with my father copying and re-dispatching. (I'm reading Enterprise Integration Patterns by Hohpe and Woolf now and can't help but think of his help then in various messaging framework patterns.) With the coming of email and the Web I could begin posting updates practically instantly. Then there came the high water mark of human communication. That's right, MySpace. With smart phones and status updates and tweets we've made our correspondence ever more immediate and ever shorter. It has simply become overwhelming.
All of this is to say that I've settled on a new topic with which to add evermore information to your data-addled minds. I am going back to my roots. Nope, not a travelogue guide to my colorful little hometown of Frankenmuth, Michigan. I'm going back to the roots whence I began writing nonsense for public consumption, France. Jen and I have booked a trip to France for June. I thought to myself the other day, here is a topic that at least a couple people (namely my parents) would be interested in hearing about. I think there is quite a bit of fodder for writing something of at least nominal interest to others in writing about travel and especially about travel to France. I will likely be headed to Belgrade again prior to our trip, so I will probably throw some of that into this as well as a little trip to Vegas for VLV in April. Primarily, however, I will focus on our preparations and then the trip to France itself. So... stay tuned. I hope you enjoy it if you stick around... uh... Bon Appetit?
