Vine, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Snapchat, Tumblr etc. the lists go on and on of old and new social media sites and networks that draw our attention and beg for inserts and tabloids from our daily lives. From what we eat to our daily drama, there is now a public place to post for all to see. Pictures, videos, mementos, fights, breakups, makeups, it's all there. Some are entertaining, some are downright embarrassing. Comments like "Don't air your dirty laundry publicly!" or demonstrating how little you listened in English class to an every 5 min posting of your whereabouts or "I'm bored, text me" (that is my personal pet peeve). I could go on. This will be what documents this generations history.
I struggle with this daily. I hate my generation not because I wish to live in another but because my generation has so little respect for what makes life beautiful and rich. It idolizes some of the biggest idiots and sorry excuses for role models one could ever hope to see. Justin Bieber. That is the only name I'm dropping. But it is the best and most recent example of how low our generation has fallen.
I hope to be proven wrong for instance, I hope Bieber snaps out of his adolescent idiotic stupor and actually does something worth while, worth idolizing. Pulling up his pants would be a great start. Here I go again, I guess I was never cut out to be a "Bielber" (violently shudders). But enough with the celebrity bashing.
I keep a journal but not one you would immediately think of. This journal is a smidgen of sanity, things that remind me of what is good and beautiful and what life is all about, to me. It is full of pictures, verses and quotes that I find inspirational, depressing, motivational and enlightening. This is not a book of helpful hints, well maybe but only to me. It's things that I find that move me as an individual in someway. So in short it's a Me book.
This book I think would portray a glimpse of what is good and wholesome for my generation. Granted my fantasy is that one day many years from now it is found and thought of as a relic, an antique and a brief smidgen of our history that isn't tarnished by celebrities and tabloids. Granted I could type all of these quotes and have them easily accessible on my laptop, iphone or create a whole blog about them on Tumblr. I could even publish them and sell them on Amazon as an easy Kindle download. But what is so fantastic about that? Nothing other than ease and convenience, which is what our entire generation has become obsessed with. Oops, I'm straying again.
Nope I am writing it all down in a book, one of which I first blogged a picture of. I hand write and hand draw everything that is in that book, because it's personal, it's intimate, it's romantic. I believe as beneficial as social media can be, we have become callous to it's convenience and lack intimacy and awe in our lives. For example, no one truly knows anyone's birthdays anymore because they know Facebook will just remind them. They'll post a quick "Happy Birthday" on their wall and that's that. That is the sole reason that I do not include mine in my profile, because I would rather be wished a sincere Happy Birthday from those 5 who actually know when it is other than 130 who just happened to see it when they logged on. It's personal and thoughtful and I like it.
So called me weird, call me old fashioned, call me what you like. I don't care. I know what I want out of life and I respect it and promise of what it can be. My generation desperately needs a wake up call because if that never happens, Cyrus and Bieber will be what this generation is remembered for. Now I'm going to cry myself to sleep and listen to Judy Collins sing about clowns and vanishing time.
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