FACEBOOKING

EEK, I cried on a video I called "Facing Facebook." It's a fun chat with my husband, in which I complained about Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the Website, and "eeked" about NOT wanting to waste my time with this silly stuff.

Maybe I should have cried "Whoo, wow -- where've I been?" (I've been aware for quite a while that everyone in the media is facebooking, or tweeting, linking in, and promoting themselves all day long.)

I have always thought of myself as a friendly, approachable, down-to-earth person who could communicate with just about anyone -- just by looking at a person, perceiving them. Hey, I've written 5 novels and 7 plays, and set up shows, performed in more than a 1000 different towns, been around the world a couple of times. Doing my work, I make intense contact with 10, 20, 50 people a day.

(It's real contact. Probably because of all the hats I've worn, still wear, as an employer, boss, stage manager, lighting designer, who's also an accountant, bookkeeper, teacher, chauffeur, janitor, seamstress, cook, mother, wife, and performer (with a capital P).

Two weeks ago I joined Facebook. Signing up, I found myself fumbling, not knowing how to navigate, while scolding myself about wasting time reading jabber from people I vaguely knew -- little paragraphs about humdrum daily adventures (mostly visiting, lunching, shopping, exercising).

Yes, I've definitely been grumbling about bumping into people I know, or used to know, or would have forgotten about if I hadn't come across their profiles, but bumping into them -- well, I can't help but be curious, and wonder why they're facebooking, and what they're accomplishing?

Let me be clear, about my reason for facebooking. (If this isn't a verb, it ought to be -- it's a use of yourself like doing push-ups, jogging, stretching.)

I need more readers for Em'sTalkery, my blog, so that I can keep writing about what's on my mind -- writing about what's real and important right now, instead of inventing plots and characters for another novel, that more than likely won't get sold.

I've found myself in a huge arena with how many? -- too many -- infinitely many others who are beckoning, needing to be seen, heard, supported, recognized in this towering arena of Babel, of people, talking, telling, sharing, reaching out ... words, words ...

I'm overflowing with words, words trying to describe what it feels like, in the two hours a day I've been working on getting more readers. It's getting to me. I'm feeling people in a way I haven't felt before. (Never before? NO! But when you perform on a stage,, you don't feel individuals. After a show, when you meet members of the audience, it's the glamorized you receiving compliments and comments about the performer, who is NOT the real you).

So here's what Facebook is doing to me.

The process -- reading brief posts that strangers or friends have written, figuring out what to say about me that'll interest them, has made me ponder ... gee, will that guy with the tough face pay attention to that sentence? Will the moon-faced goddess, the cook, the jogger, the actor, housewife, mystery writer, the trainer, the dog lover, impatient teenager, gamester?

All these different types of people ... I feel their sensibilities from just a glimpse -- suddenly all their friends, families, locales, professions and words they use -- whew -- it makes my grown-up, professional, organized writer self feel ... not naked, but uncovered, kind of raw.

They, those hundred new faces with whom I'm communicating, have made me want to be more accessible.

It's giving me a new sense of what's on mind, and how to say it, share it right away, directly.

A more accessible me? That's fun. That's a whee, whoopee!