Social Networking

After my high school reunion last August, I joined MySpace to connect with friends from my class. I also had a few other friends there from other activities over the years. Net total of friends: about a dozen or so.

On Sunday, my wife convinced me to join Facebook (she has a page there). I created an account and as of this morning have reconnected with 20 friends from the past. Big difference. Facebook definitely helped facilitate finding folks too.

Guess which one I'll spend more time on?

I like how in this day and age it is very easy to locate and reconnect with people from your past. It really is amazing. We can talk with friends from all over, any day, any time. We don't have to wait for the mail to deliver our communications, or pay for phone calls. Just type and send.

Most of my friends I connect with are online, and we use the Internet to communicate. Sure, I have people I know at work, the place I spend most time at every day, but those are co-workers. I've never been one to hang with folks from work. Work is your job, a place to accomplish tasks and get assignments done. It should not be a place for major socializing. You know the folks that socialize at work - they're at the water cooler or hanging outside the conference rooms, chatting and laughing and planning where to go for lunch. Know what? They're using the company dime to be social. I never got that.

I do my socializing on my own time, from my own house on nights and weekends. That's the seperation of work and play (much like the seperation of church and state, without all the messy stuff that happens with politics).