Commitments

My schedule this semester, teaching six college courses, is hectic on some days and totally open on other days.
But nature abhors a vacuum, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I don't have classes scheduled, when I could use the day to take walks with friends, to write my novels, to grade papers and answer students' questions by email, something usually comes up that requires my attention.
On Tuesday, I made the mistake of posting on Facebook what a fabulous, carefree day I was having. My daughter immediately began to beg me to bring her lunch at her work place.

I said no, but she continued to beg, and by that point, my day was ruined anyway. If I went to buy lunch then took it to her, an hour of my day would disappear. If I didn't take it to her, I felt stingy and mean.
Wednesday passed in the blur of four classes starting at 8 a.m., a quick gym workout, then a 4-hour evening class.
But before I pulled myself out of  bed at 5:45 this morning, I already knew that the day had filled with errands, the biggest one being a drive down to Athens, Ohio, where my boys go to college. The drive is beautiful, but I'm not going to enjoy it or even to spend time with the boys.
Instead, I'm driving down, picking up the car that needs a brake job and driving back.
Yes, my family is sending me after the car with the faulty brakes.
So a three-hour drive for me this morning followed by an afternoon of grading papers.
Hope you get some time to enjoy yourself today.

Why My Marriage is Pending -- On Facebook

Sometimes, social media gets me into awkward situations.
I blog, I'm on Facebook, I have a Twitter account and people keep following me even though I don't know why because I rarely tweet. You'd think that I am fairly savvy about technology.
But I can't tell you the number of times I've called my daughter Grace to say, "Fix  it!" I've usually posted something I didn't mean to or been tagged in a photo that I don't like or made some sort of awful editing error that will not look good for a writer.
One day, as Grace and I were looking at something on Facebook, she clicked on my profile and said, "Why is this pending?"
It was a request from Earl to confirm that we are married.
I mean, of course, we are. We've been married nearly 25 years.

I hadn't seen his request and had no idea when he sent it.
Originally, when I was using my Facebook page as an author page, I didn't include anyone in my family settings. As you know if you read my blog, I talk about my kids and their exploits. I didn't want to reveal to the world their last names, preserving them a tiny bit of anonymity.
But, now I have a separate author page, and I try to limit my personal Facebook page to friends and family, so I could safely acknowledge my husband on my Facebook page.
The only problem was, the day that Grace pointed out that I hadn't acknowledge the marriage request, well, Earl and I were in the middle of a fight.
It was only a few weeks ago, but I can't remember what the fight was about (of course). I told Grace I couldn't possible accept his request now because that would be a conciliatory act in the middle of an argument. The fight faded, but I didn't remember to go on Facebook and add Earl as my husband.
The other night when Earl was on his Facebook page, he clicked on his profile.
"Why is this pending?" he asked.
"Oh," I laughed and told him the story about seeing it when we were in a fight. He immediately pretended to be affronted and protested that I didn't need to acknowledge him if I didn't want to.
"I can't do it from my phone," I explained. My computer was all the way across the room.
But I updated my profile, typing in Earl's name as my husband, since I couldn't accept his request on my phone.
Now, our marriage is no longer pending. Facebook does believe that we were married in 2011 rather than in 1990. And if you were to click on the marriage statement, you'd see some pretty strange photos of me and Earl, like one of us standing on the top of an Indian head statue, Tecumseh, and accompanied by a French friend. Plus Earl's comment, "Beautiful day, beautiful bride." People must think, "Is this where they got married?" But his comments go with another picture and another post.

Like I said, it's all very complicated.
Very bizarre, but you can't always fix social media.
Here's an actual photo as we were driving away from Mom and Dad's farm to the reception.

To Friend or To Block

Dear Relatives and Faraway Friends,
I'm so happy to be your friend on Facebook. Now, even though we live apart from each other, I can keep up with your activities, see your fun pics, watch your baby grow, laugh at your puppy pictures. Facebook gives us a chance to be closer.
 I can see the nursery you've prepared for the baby or like your child's senior picture. I can cheer for you on a run or a bike ride. It makes me feel less lonely for all my relatives while I'm here in Central Ohio and you are spread from other areas in Ohio to Florida to Virginia to Texas and California.
But, even though it's not an election, you've started to "like" things that drive me crazy. Political things. Things like bombs and guns and self-centered politicians who don't really care about making our country better. And then, I have to block you.
 Because it drives me crazy.
 I bite my tongue and sit on my hands so I don't respond.

 I want to ply people with knowledge, but a recent survey shows that, whether liberal or conservative, people are not influenced by logic when it comes to politics. That means that liberals are convinced that President George Bush banned all stem cell research, even though he allowed research to continue with already identified stem cell lines, and conservatives when shone a graph that had a line going up with the number of jobs under President Obama refused to see it as an increase in jobs. That same graph when showing shoe sales, they could read as an increase in shoe sales.
Okay, I'm not going to convince you and you're not going to convince me.
I admit to being guilty of liking one thing political on Facebook. It was a law that passed and an old high school friend who I hadn't talked to in years brought it up the minute we exchanged messages. And we didn't friend each other.
Since then, I have avoided liking anything political. So how bout we avoid politics on Facebook?
That way we can still be friends, and I won't have to block you. So you don't drive me crazy.

Dragged Into Social Media

My kids have forced me to enter the 21st century with social media.
I check my Facebook most days and post on there at least once a week now. And last week I set up an Instagram account. Joining each community can be laid at the feet of my children's travel and  independence.
I joined Facebook in August 2010 as Grace journeyed 10 hours away to college. I wanted to be able to keep up with her posts and her friends. I still wanted to keep an eye on her.
Luckily, she didn't mind adding me as her friend.
Slowly I've added friends and when I got my iPhone, I found it easy to check Facebook, like other people's posts, and add my own "status updates."
My middle child doesn't have a Facebook page, and my youngest wouldn't add me as a friend, but he isn't active on Facebook any more. Now he's all over Instagram.
As he prepared to leave for a trip to France, I realized that if I wanted to see his pictures, I'd need to follow him on Instagram.
To me, the worst part about setting up an account for Instagram or Twitter or even Words With Friends, is choosing a user name. I know I'm going to be stuck with this name forever. Should I choose my name? Something I like -- writing, running, mochas? I avoided all "mom" names.
Tucker begrudgingly added me as a friend on Instagram and has posted sparsely this week from his trip abroad. Heer's on that he tagged: "Average night on the Eiffel Tower." And I note how "miserable" he looks surrounded by high school girls.
I have a couple of people following me on Instagram, but I haven't posted anything and don't know when I will.
For now though, I'm on Instagram and Facebook getting hints into the secret lives of my teenagers.

Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave...

It all started with an email about writing submissions. I'm part of a writing yahoo group that used to be very active, but lately only sends emails when someone gets a successful publishing deal. An email came across about submissions for an erotica anthology.
Now, I've never written erotica. Whenever a sex scene pops into my novels, I inevitably tone it down, leaving the details to the readers' imaginations. This submission called for erotica of 1200 words. I mean, who couldn't write that? The only problem was that I wouldn't want it associated with me. How embarassing for me, my children, my parents... So, I decided to create a pseudonym.
It took some thinking before I came up with a name that I thought would be innocent, yet provocative. Think sexy librarian. No, I'm not telling you because what would be the point of creating an anonymous pseudonym and then telling everyone.
What I didn't realize was how many steps it would take to create this fake persona. I thought I'd start a Facebook page. Before I did that, of course, I had to have an email. So I went to gmail and created an account based on my pseudonym. Then I went to Facebook. My pseudonym might as well be younger, one of us should enjoy it. She's about 10 years younger than I am, in the prime of her life. Aaah.
Of course, I can't post a picture of myself. Next I had to create an account to make an avatar. Remember that the avatar isn't of me, but of this erotica writer person. Am I giving it away by posting it on my blog? I have no idea how people can track down other people on Facebook. I sent a message to a friend asking her to add me to a group and then I wondered if that message is posted to her wall so everyone will know that it's me, posing as this other person.
I have resisted Facebook as myself. I don't want to spy on my teenagers. Really, I'd prefer not to know what they do most of the time. When I want to communicate with my parents (who do have a Facebook account but have no idea how it was created), I just call them.
I have a webpage called paulitakincer.com so any old friends searching for me should be able to find me pretty easily.
I spent a couple of hours this morning creating my fake persona.
I haven't written any erotica. Yes, I know the deadline is Monday, and chances are that I'll never finish it, much less submit it, but I did have fun playing dress up. Isn't this really the equivalent of playing let's pretend when you're a kid?
Now I'll go back to being a teacher who has papers to grade, a woman who needs to go work out at the gym, a writer who is 200 pages into her next novel, and a mother who has to get her teenagers out the door to school.
The fantasy was fun while it lasted.

Joining the Revolution

For awhile now, people have been sending me invitations to Facebook and Linked In, social media kinds of things. I'm resisiting. Obiously, it took me years to actually start writing a blog more frequently than once a month and sometimes I still fall into my old ways, spending my time with actual people rather than my blog friends.
But this youtube video may have persuaded me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
I'm not on Facebook because my kids are. It's a place where they can hang out with their friends and not worry that I'm looking over their shoulders. Of course, I have their passwords, so if I ever wanted to look at their pages, I could. I thought I would leave Facebook to them. Maybe that's a moot point since my mother is one of their friends. What are they going to put on Facebook for their grandmother to see?
My old college roommate found me online and she told me she looked for me on Facebook but couldn't find me. I don't think it was too much of a hardship for her to search "Paulita Kincer" and find me at www.paulitakincer.com
My other thought was, "Am I going to start spending a lot of time updating my Facebook page?" Will this take the place of blogging or am I just going to spend more time on the computer?
The other thing about that youtube video is that it was directed toward advertisers, letting them know that advertising will be people driven. Does that mean that if I'm not on Facebook then I won't be getting as much advertising? I mean, look how highly susceptible I am, thinking about joining Facebook because of this video. Don't you think it would be better for me to avoid advertising altogether?
So, I'm still torn. Other than the fact that "everybody's doing it," is there another reason I should join Facebook? What am I really missing?