2009 year in review and the year ahead
I was appalled when I realized the other day that the most recent post I made was on January 4, 2009. I find it (Alanis Morissette) ironic that the first (and almost only) post of the year was about my goal to become a more social person. Go ahead and read that post (or just find it on the main page, you won’t have to scroll very far). I’ll wait.
So, how did I do, you ask?
Small talk was one area that I actually felt like I improved. I made a point to speak with people I randomly met in the elevator and to ask acquaintances about their families or some other event in their lives that I knew about. I still need to work on this, but it helped to learn how to break the ice.
Engaging in debates with people in subjects that I’m only moderately versed in or about controversial subjects is still something I need to work on. I did make an effort to do this with people I was already comfortable with and had a good idea of how they would react, but I didn’t go much beyond that.
Out of all of the areas that I identified to work on, I thought online conversations would be the easiest to tackle. It turns out it was the most difficult. I know that my blogging suffered greatly because of lack of time (or initiative) and what little I did have was taken by short posts to Facebook and Twitter. Even then, those were primarily one-way conversations and my goal was to increase my interactions with people.
It turns out that I’m of two minds about online social interactions. One one hand, I love the openness of everything and ease of finding whatever information you could want. On the other hand, there’s privacy to be concerned about as well as the very real threat of saying or doing something wrong. Anonymity (well, perceived anonymity anyway) makes people a lot bolder when they decide to express themselves online. They’ll say things online that they’d never say to your face. I try to treat people online the same way I’d treat them in person (the online version of the Golden Rule?), but I’ve been around long enough to know that not everyone follows that philosophy.
I desperately want to express my views about any number of important (to me), but controversial topics. I don’t get much of an opportunity in the offline world to do this either (my wife puts up with occasional grumbling and not much else). The whole “don’t talk about religion and politics” thing has been ingrained into me. For example, what if a potential future employer Googles my name, finds my post on the controversial subject of the mating habits of Northern European red-tailed barn swallow? He or she may take the exact opposite view and decide that anyone who believes what I do on such an important subject could not make a good employee. Opportunity lost. It could happen!
Okay, so what does all this mean for 2010? I plan to continue the momentum I’ve started this year with becoming more social. To up the ante just a little bit, I’m going to try my best to blog at least once a week if not more often. You’ll just have to skip those posts that you don’t agree with and tell me what a great job I did sticking to my goal.
