I’m not ashamed of being addicted to Facebook, so I don’t feel any compelling need to be forgiven for making it such an important part of my day. Facebook is fun. It’s informative. It’s a connection tool. And until it has been proven by psychologists to stunt or reverse emotional/intellectual growth, it stays. I’m “free-range” at the moment (a catchy term for under-employed), a writer by passion, and accustomed to going to bed and waking up when my messed-up Gemini biorhythms dictate. I am hurting nobody (else).
Eventually, my waning bank account may holler at me to stop climbing mountains. I won’t listen. Eventually, I will have to carve out an entrepreneurial niche for myself as a sought-after, paid blogger (hint, hint!) – or, fall back into an unfulfilled, Orwellian-style cubicle job (nada!). Eventually, I will have to take some of the candid shit I write and let it baby-step its way into public with the risk of seeing it fall flat on its face! That’s the privilege you gain, and price you pay, for surrendering your anonymity.
Facebook was pretty much Faceless to me, part of the once mysterious world of social media: playground to computer geeks and marketing wizards, plus the first wave of bloggers who suddenly discovered that they didn’t need to stuff their work into a SASE to become published and gather a readership. I had dabbled a bit with Twitter, but had no real reason to engage in Facebook on a regular basis until…
…I couldn’t get ahold of my kids.
When your kids grow up and leave home, they only leave it (and you) alone while things are going just ducky. A good part of their belongings remain behind, billowing out of torn boxes and all over the basement carpet. But when all hell breaks loose at their end, they’re on the phone providing you with a detailed account of the problem - right down to how you can help, and what that will typically cost. It’s predictable. It can be dramatic. It happens in parenting. Many years ago the most perfect quote came into my head about early teenagers (“Tweens”): They look at you disparagingly as if you’re the sum cause of, and solution to, all of their problems!”
Things must have been going too well, because my kids were MIA (Maybe it’s Alive?). I didn’t know where they were. Messages were not returned. Sometimes their pay-as-you-go cell numbers would be disconnected. Sometimes I’d get a last seen report from a friend who'd run into one of them in the 7-11, the grocery store, outside the tattoo/piercing shop, or the liquor store … exiting with a brown paper bag tucked under one arm while skateboarding into the velvety dark night with a cigarette dangling from their yap. Still smoking, huh? Thought you said you’d quit? That wasn’t me, mom! Uh huh. Right.
They became fleeting ghosts, flying well under my radar. I’d find out after the fact that they had been to New York or Las Vegas. And then receive a short, cryptic and no-doubt censored account of why they ended up there in the first place. I felt out of touch, alienated, and really confused as to how piss-broke people with no driver’s licenses or credit cards (Uh Huh. Right), could travel more often than I could.
Enter F-A-C-E-B-O-O-K.
Parents, your children are on Facebook. Children, your parents are now on Facebook. That is a certainty, right up there with getting old, finding more bills in your mailbox than money, and the cruelty of gravity (especially on a mountain). If you want to know what your kids are doing, send them a friend request. They'll freak out, then accuse you of “stalking them”, as if their Facebook profile suddenly became public overnight. They'll cover their eyes, abruptly snap shut the covers on their laptops or phones and wait for you to go away. You can’t fault them for it. It’s the same BS strategy you taught them when they first graduated out of diapers on how to deal with the flesh-eating monster under the bed: just ignore it, it’s not really there! The alleged violation then goes viral, like an anthill smacked hard with a shovel. They'll speed text all 5,000 friends (only half of which they’ve met face-to-face) in absolute horror and ask them not to encourage you, or add you into their accounts! But if you are patient and relentless, they will eventually buckle under the tyranny and add you in. Why? Because they really do love you. And they know exactly how to tweak their privacy settings so that you can’t see the controversial stuff they share so haphazardly with masked pervs all over the planet. When that happens, just detour through whatever friend accounts haven’t figured out the privacy settings yet! You’ll find the dirt.
My early foray into Facebook involved a short learning curve, probably because I am fairly tech savvy. Once I could manipulate my way around the site, I started loading up select pictures of my own life and activities, making sure to leave off things like the birthday and phone numbers. I don’t need anybody phoning to remind me that I’ve passed the half-century point! I even set up an accompanying page for my beloved cat, which triggered another viral reaction in my kids’ community that perhaps I was “not stable” because my cat was now tagging my kids every time she flew off her carpeted scratch post. See, this is how I gain elevation when my mom is not here and climbing her own mountains! Okay. I’ll allow them that one. I backed off. Now I just don’t tag them.
Eventually, my kids and their friends starting following my updates as I topped out peaks, skied, and travelled up the Everest Valley. I took road trips to the U.S. and slept in the back of my SUV in parking lots before heading out sleep-deprived, cold and groggy into the crisp, starry night with my headlamp to climb big, gas-stinky volcanoes. I’d hack unsecured wi-fi service at restaurants or in front of hotels to upload everything as soon as I could. What the hell, mom! OMG. When did you become a climbing bum? I thought you had vertigo! I do. You can’t conquer vertigo, any more than you can conquer a mountain. You can only manage a fear of heights by teaching your butterflies to fly in formation. I became cool, rad … Whoa, your mom climbs mountains! Suddenly, a generation who had no inkling that I walked around with an avalanche beacon around my neck instead of a kitchen apron were giving me the Facebook “Like” thumbs up … instead of flipping me the bird.
What began as a reliable technique to keep track of my kids evolved into an appreciation for how I could follow my own friends, and share with the world what I enjoyed most about my richly active outdoor life. From there, I started to post opinions, observations, and snippets of insight that some people enjoyed. When am I going to read you in print? came the occasional question. Uh, I think you just did. We’re not hostage to restrictive print media anymore. That branched out to include this blog site: VertigoGirl, which has been inconsistently updated ever since. I’m working on that.
Being a part of social media is certainly a choice, and it can/does become addictive. I've really enjoyed the Facebook environment and make no apologies for hanging around on it because it has provided me the perfect venue to boldly be who I am.
