I remember the days when you left your home, and for that time you were in transit, you were simply out of touch. It had its good points and its bad. On the good side, sometimes you just wanted to escape from the world - be out of touch. Of course, being alone with our thoughts can prove troublesome for some us and its best to remain distracted. On the bad side, I remember in my late teens waiting for a friend to come over to my house to pick me up for a night on the town. I was waiting outside, and he was taking forever. You see, back in those days, it never occurred to me to try and contact him; re-enter the house and call him to see if he'd left. I'd just assumed he was on his way and trusted in that assumption. As it turned out, on his way out the door, he said good-bye to his Mother and became engrossed in the movie she was watching and sat down to watch it. It never occurred to him to call my house and let me know, or tell someone to let me know, that he'd be running late. Back in those days, we didn't have easy access to phones, and reaching for one every second of the day, just wasn't something you did.
Today, if one is thinking of going into the medical profession, concentrating on being a neck and back or carpal tunnel specialist might be where the money is. Today's humanoid is walking around, with their head down and their thumbs wildly pounding away on the tiny keys of their cell phone, desperately in need to communicate with others every second of every day.
My generation?
Well, we had our heads up and were taking in the world. It's surprising to realize that the beauty of nature and architecture is all around you if you took your eyes away from that small digital screen and just took a minute to soak it all in.
This also brings up another point. I had friends growing up, as I hope we all did. For the life of me, I don't know what I could have said to those friends just about every minute of the day? At some point we were going to run out of things to text to one another. If the wife and I were in communication that often, sooner or later we'd run into the same problem. It's been over ten years now that we've been together, at some point we'd just have to look at one another and say, "You got anything else?" "Me too. All right, nice knowing you." My wife and I get along well, but I'm sure - and I don't hold it against her - that she enjoys her moments away from me; it also gives me a chance to take my foot out of my mouth and wash it in preparation for the next time I firmly place it back there.
I remember visiting my 14-year-old niece (I'm sure you know where this is going) and watching as she texted and communicated with a friend on Facebook. I made the observation that their conversation could move along faster if they'd just pick up a phone and communicate directly with one another. The look on her face said it all. I'm sure that at some point in my youth, when I thought I knew everything about everything, I gave my parents a similar look. She politely ignored my comment, but I'm sure whatever vernacular they use for "lame" or "dinosaur" these days passed through her digitally involved mind.
As a journalist, I often ran into individuals who would say to me, "You have to write a book about me; tell my story. Nobody would believe the life I've led." I firmly believed that while I'm sure their life was interesting to them, and I didn't begrudge them the belief that somehow they were more special than the rest of us, that their lives weren't really book worthy. I've had the displeasure of even reading some celebrity autobiographies where I felt their lives just weren't that interesting in the telling (sorry Pat Benatar, I am a fan), so I was willing to bet I was right in my assessment.
Facebook is the answer to the "You should write a book about me and my life" people. Facebook allows us all to put our lives online for others to see and share. (Okay, it's not just Facebook anymore, but I'm using them as representative of all social media sites and forums). I once saw my brother-in-law post, "Going for a coffee at Timmy's." Okay? You really felt compelled to take the time to write this out and post it before going to get a coffee? Did you really need to share that? I know it didn't affect the rest of my evening, although I was a little perplexed for a while.
Okay, okay, hold your horses! I know social media, Twitter, Facebook and such has its good and useful side. It's a great way for family members, who have spread out all over the globe to keep in touch with one another, and I'm a sure other purposes I'm not going into here, but it also has the danger of allowing us to put too much of ourselves and our lives online for others to see. Shouldn't there be a little mystery in life?
I recently heard a radio talk show where it was suggested that the first place prospective employers go to check up on applicants is Linkedin. I'm sure Facebook is not far behind. They want to match up your resume with what you have on Linkedin. It was also suggested that if you didn't have a profile up that was seen as suspect.
Suspect?!
Maybe some of us have just come to the conclusion that we're just not that interesting and don't want to go online to advertise that fact. I mean, I personally think I'm interesting, but I could probably pull together a group of friends and associates who could argue the opposite...and in a compelling way.
So, now I've written two books and am working on the next. Who the hell is David Rusk? I'm a nobody. And I'm not really a nobody wanting to be a somebody. I live a life where there are always stories and characters living in my mind, and hopefully, unlike mine, they have interesting lives that deserve to be captured in a book. If I can entertain people by doing that, by sharing these stories, that is all that matters. It nice to see one's imagination come to life and touch others lives, if that is in fact, where I'm heading. I don't want to put my life online, but it turns out, to promote my books, and build an audience, I'm expected to embrace social media.
So I've come to my compromise.
I'm Twittering and I'm blogging, and whatever else I have to do. In doing so, I've also seen the benefit of 'friending' some interesting people that a normal life would never have allowed me to meet. But I've also decided that I'm still boring. While I've allowed some personal stuff to sneak by me, for the most part I want to inform or entertain. The characters in my mind have always been more interesting than me, so, hopefully, that insanity that exists there, will take me into the 21st century, help me shake off the chains of my Luddite ways, and see and embrace the beauty of being a social media maniac. I'm here now, and while I know I'm late to the party, that's really not surprising if you really knew me.
And, as to whether my life story is worth telling in a book, if I ever do get around to writing an autobiography, it's going to be the first unauthorized autobiography ever written.
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