Social Media Challenged...or The Challenge of Social Media

Used to be that going online for me meant that I would head over to AOL, log on and play a game of solitaire while I waited for the computer to connect with the internet, using a very weird, but oddly reassuring set of blips, beeps, dial tones and what almost amounted to a computer shout, before the little icon would pop up on the mailbox and the AOL guy would say, "You've got mail!" For a few months in late 1996, AOL allowed you to program a guest celebrity voice to tell you 'you had mail'. Mine was Hugh Grant, before the whole Divine Brown thing and movies like American Dreamz, something....the Morgans and Bridget Jones 2 and I was still a fan. Sorry Hugh... got nothin' but love for ya...but you did make some execrable movies. (Cough) Mickey Blue Eyes (Cough) Nine Months.

Nowadays the gap between me and the internet has considerably narrowed. There is a whole WIFI network in my home. No more blips and beeps. Just hit the icon and go, you are online. Frequently I am online on my laptop/tablet and my TV is too, simultaneously playing some Netflix offering.

Many days, before I've had my morning breakfast, and while I am still in my robe and pajamas, I've already started 'online' because I've no less than 4-5 sites to hit.  Outlook/Gmail for my emails, Facebook to make sure that I am still relevant and have 'friends', LinkedIn to obsess over my professional image, Twitter to check my popularity and YouTube for anything new and recreational. Not to mention blog stats, to see if anyone is actually reading this and puzzle out who the people are that are breezing by this to read and not comment.

Frankly, I am tired just reading the above.

As part of my 'career training', I have been increasingly coached and coerced into creating, refining and editing my 'online presence'.

My online presence...I started to ponder that today. Introspection reached a zenith when looking through my LinkedIn contacts and all the suggestions from them (LinkedIn) of the "People You May (Should) Know", were, I realized about 95% from Non-Company. Non-Company= pain. I  just don't want anything to do with or to have to think about Non-Company.  But how do you just delete people?  LinkedIn is a place where prestige is gained by the amount of contacts you have and how often your profile is buzzed. Hopefully it's buzzed by some multi-millionaire entrepreneur type needing a personal assistant who wouldn't mind working out of his lakeside estate on Lake Como.

Ditto for Facebook. Facebook is just pain of a more familial and social nature. Again, how do you just delete?  Because FB contacts are not just business contacts, many are personal friends and relations. Many of which you might see once a year, if that? So why do I need to be updated constantly on your activities? Most of which just serve as reminders that my life isn't as populated by cute kids doing cute things, and backyard BBQ's as yours because nearly everyone in my life is dead.

 I even tried quitting cold turkey only to be told by a career counselor, that amounted to career suicide.  Really. Could my career die a more gruesome death than it already has due to natural causes?

At least with Twitter, my feed gives me useful things, reminders about encroaching thunder storms, traffic alerts, gas price alerts, when my favorite TV shows are on, what the celebrities on my favorite TV shows are doing. By the way, kudos to the NCIS Twitter people who bonus-ed me with a nice pic of a toothsome and shirtless Michael Weatherly reading over the script for the 1st episode of the new season! Hopefully Michael was at the part where Tony DiNozzo kills the bastards who shot Gibbs and is able to ascertain that he was wearing a vest and will be okay.....

YouTube is probably my favorite. It lets me know whenever Mazda have new video of the Miata up on their feed, gives me back all of my childhood memories, in some cases lets me watch entire seasons of "I'm Alan Partridge", and the music videos that thanks to reality TV, MTV no longer play.

I know that, much like rock and roll, (which actually may have died without us realizing it) social media is here to stay. But just as the old folks who shook their heads at Elvis (sacrilege) and Jerry Lee, I don't have to like it!

Here's to future days! You know when the hackers hit the server farms and we are knocked back to an age where we have to talk to one another in person, on the phone, and listen to what we actually say out loud.

Well, a girl can dream, can't she?

Non-Company that I Worked For But Was Never Really One Of Them...Or What I Learned and How I Learned It

So fast forward...hello 2015.

I missed the beginning of 2015 and most of 2014...
No I wasn't in a coma or anything, but I might as well have been.

Nearly three weeks ago, on a Thursday, I was called to my manager's office to as he put it, "Discuss a few things".
 
I grab my steno and a pen, dismiss the faint feeling of unease in the pit of my stomach and I walk to his office. As I enter, I see my manager seated at his desk and then as I open the door wider, I see the Sr. HR Rep. In later appraisals of the moment, two scenes from movies come to mind, in Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo, Leia, Chewy and gang are on Cloud City and invited to break bread with Lando Calrissian and Co, the door swings wide, then you hear the ominous low breaths of James Earl Jones as Vader welcomes them into the dining room with a malevolent hiss, "Please join me". The second being in Jurassic Park, when the velociraptors put their heads around the door, in a 'didn't expect to see us, did you?' pose.

I see an envelope on the desk, it's for me...my 'separation papers'.
I feel just like a wife who is being served divorce papers for the termination of a marriage she didn't even know was in trouble until that moment. Laid off...economic circumstances you understand, corporate restructuring, you are uninstalled, downsized, no longer an acceptable risk...you are out.

So the gist of all of this is, I am once again, unemployed...
It was hard for me to type this out, seeing it in black and white on the page makes it seem so final.
It does however, make all of the resumes sent, the interview clothes purchased and the hairdresser visit seem more worthwhile.

Fast forward to last Monday and I am headed out the door when my phone beeps to let me know I have a message. It's from a former co-worker. At first, I figure it is just another person reaching out, another "Hey man, sucks to be you, keep in touch, k,", both of us knowing all along that it is lip service and that neither of us will really be...in touch.

It's not...
What is on my phone, is a message telling me that a former co-worker is well...no other way to put it...dead.
I find myself thinking...
This time last month, this co-worker (let's call him Greg)Greg and I were having daily discussions about the training of a temp. Less than a month later, I no longer work there and he is...gone.
Really gone.

It doesn't seem possible...doesn't compute, add up, make sense...incomprehensible. My mind won't accept it.
Greg was 52 when he died and apparently he was alone when it happened. No one knew he was gone until he quit answering his cell phone and someone went to investigate. A coronary, no one there to dial 911, to talk to him...to hold his hand, to tell him he was cared about...loved.

I kept wondering, hoping that at least, in his last moments he called out to God and He, as he promised he would, sent an angel to take him the final steps...
"Leave it to Me, I'll lead you Home".

I spent the last 2 years or so living as if already dead. I went everyday to a job and I worked, and I worked and I took the work home with me, both literally and figuratively. I ate, slept, breathed and dreamt about it. I fought anxiety, anger, and depression constantly. Every morning as I drove myself to work, I would cry and beg God not to let me fail. I never prayed for joy or peace or happiness.
I prayed and prayed and I begged God, "All I have is this job, okay, All I am IS this job. Don't let me fail, let me be good at it, let me be the best at it. Please let them want me, please let them accept me, then I'd say again as if God forgot, PLEASE DON'T LET ME FAIL" .

I sat in my therapist's office week after week crying to the point I couldn't form words, could barely breathe. When I could, I'd laugh through tears about my job, that I loved so much I had to go to therapy every week.

I craved success and monetary rewards like a drug. One of the wake up calls is a moment of clarity I had when I told my therapist that the only joy I derived from my work was checking my bank account.

Saturday morning came, I woke, did my hair, spent time doing my nails and makeup. I put on my best Sunday go to meeting clothes and I went to Greg's memorial. As I was entering the church, I saw a few former managers and I heard a familiar voice call my name, "Hi Jill, how're you doing?", and it was if I were passing them in the hall on a Monday morning, as if nothing had ever happened. I was astounded,
"Really, you're going to ask me, how am I doing when you know damn well that you let me go quicker than it takes me to send an email...as if I were a smelly old cat that you were putting down?"

Then a light went on and I realized that for them, this is how they have to be, to make it in a corporate world, you have to divorce yourself from pesky emotions, like compassion, empathy, caring.

I ponder, how much longer would it have taken me to get that numb, that dead inside?

Later in the memorial, people reminisced about Greg.
But not about his work...
About how much he loved baseball, coaching, his son...how passionate he was about both these things. The church altar was literally filled with photos of him in baseball uniforms, and with his son.

I realized that I had nothing like that. No passion...that I been living as dead for years now.

I wonder how much of Greg's coronary was the result of life at Non Company, did he too experience the anxiety, depression, sadness...anger?

I don't want to be dead at 52.

And so, I thank God today that he loved me enough to let me fail.
To fail, so I that I might finally really live.