I have to thank Mark Zuckerberg and the design team at Facebook for showing me that I was a bitchblogger and a rebel tweep long before I began blogging and WAAAYYYY before I understood a hashtag from a tic tac toe board. I am getting the new Facebook "timeline." This timeline thing, before it was thought out, apparently just showed up one day. Let's all remember that Facebook began as a secret collegiate club. I do believe some of the young'uns in my world deleted their FB accounts and started all over again. The collegiate uproar may have caused some changes in the way your "new timeline goes live."
I've been warned every day for the past week that on February 24th, my "timeline" will be public. In other words, delete the shit you don't want any prospective employers to see. I only began using Facebook to stalk my kids. I have nothing to delete. My problem with any future endeavors will be hiding my entire "internet footprint" as a bitchblogger if, for example, I should decide to run for public office or something. My wise cracks are "cached" all over the place and somehow, I think I lose lots of credibility when it can be readily found that I was seated on a couch within an arms length of those Jersey Shore boys. WHATever. I am who I am and I'll be who I'll be. And that is that.
The timeline, however..... as I was glancing through, and really.... do I need to really have to figure out how the hell to RELEARN Facebook come February 24th...... I went back to 2009 when I started the kid stalking thing. Low and behold, I discover an article I posted on my wall, a wall, a feed, a status update.... whatever.... wherever.....however..... It was from The Gothamist on December 18, 2009.
It humored me to read that New Yorkers were crowned The Unhappiest People In The Entire Country. And, if you lived in New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan or Indiana, you were not far behind us miserable bastards in New York. On the other side of the coin, if you lived in Hawaii, Louisiana, Colorado, Florida or Tennessee, you were living large. Hawaii, got it. Tropical paradise. Louisiana..... hell, yesterday was Fat Tuesday and I should have been hanging from a balcony on Bourbon Street with beads or something. Aspen, if you love the cold weather that would be The Place. Miami? No explanation necessary and I have a photo of a GIANT mojito on my phone to prove that. Tennessee.... I did rather enjoy the nine hours I spent in Nashville but maybe that could be more about Elvis and Memphis?
Why does ANY of this matter? Well.... for starters, can someone tell me whose time, energy and most importantly MONEY is spent compiling the data necessary to come up with this list. Does anyone really care? Is is appropriate to jump to some sort of a mass conclusion. Who reviewed the data? How did they skew those statistics? The whole thing was very silly.
Until it wasn't. And this is where I apparently began to show my bitchblogger teeth. Who conducted this study? The CDC. You know, The Center for Disease Control. And at 7:33PM on December 18, I posed a very simple question...... reasonable, direct, to the point and foreshadowing this foot stomping, wise cracking, answer demanding bitchbloggy attitude......
Quite simply, I took my act on the Riddle Me This path and I asked my "friends" ....
AnneMarie Ciccarella Does anyone find it bizarre that this study was done by the Centers for Disease Control? THIS is what our tax dollars are being used for? How about studying, um, oh, I don't know... maybe a disease????
December 18, 2009 at 7:33pm ·
And there you have the beginning of my personal rebel rousing...... and by the way, I'm still waiting for an acceptable answer, just in case anyone is interested or has any thoughts OR cares to share anything that resembles an insightful "aha" for the feeble minded, MISERABLY unhappy New Yorker. For now? I'm just shaking my head in disbelief. Stupidity makes me irritated. I guess that translates over to the unhappy column. Hell, at least I know WHY I'm unhappy.
Now, if someone, ANYONE might shed some light as to WHY I had to be studied to make this determination? Hell, I'd be mighty happy. Miami, let the mojitos flow, huge breaking Hawaiian waves HAPPY. Check it out, would ya? And get back to me, could ya? Hell, let's just waste more CDC money because, apparently, we've run out of diseases to fix.....
Hello my rebel-rousing friend!
ReplyDeleteLoved this post. Love all of your posts actually. I am not looking forward to relearning facebook (aaaargh, ugh, blech). SO annoying. And I don't get the time line thing and I don't want to . . . but, inevitably I will have to.
I originally started writing under the name cancerfree2b in order to keep my "non-cancer" life separate from my cancer life. I wanted privacy - especially during treatment. And I wanted to protect my business (I am self employed and I feared the effect that my illness - if publicly known - would have on my ability to keep and get clients). So, I hid so to speak behind my cancer identity.
I have become less concerned with keeping these identities separate . . . especially since I realize that there isn't a "non-cancer life" for me. I don't mean that in the sense of being sick, I mean it in the sense that having had cancer has changed my life and so there really isn't a "non-cancer" version of my life (while I certainly hope to remain cancer free) that is not something I can control.
Anyway, I have a lot of stuff that I guess is now going to show up in my timeline? WHATever is right.
Anyway, mostly, just wanted to say hello and that I enjoyed your post!
All the best,
Lisa
Hi Lisa...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and I LOVE the points you make here about keeping our lives separate. Many people blog under "assumed names" to protect their lives from being turned upside down. And you make such a great point about coming to a realization there is no "non-cancer life" .... so TRUE. I began to get concerned when all of my blog buddies became FB friends. Figure now my kids are stalking ME and wondering "what the hell is going on with mom with these people we never heard of?" Jokes on me, I guess..... Serves me right for stalking them in the first place.
Hard to stay in balance if we are expending so much energy trying to lead a double life....
Love to you,
AnneMarie