OK, I’m trying something new.

New Horizons

New Horizons

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. Well, maybe not a LOT of time but probably more time than I should. And ever since I got a smart phone about a year ago, I spend a lot more time looking at my phone than I ever used to do. It’s as though I’m afraid I’m going to miss something important. (or maybe it’s a way of avoiding things that actually are important. The jury’s still out on this one) On Facebook, I’m often posting thoughts I want to share, ideas about life or miscellaneous observations that are hovering on the top of my brain and which people near me in real life (family, co-workers, close friends and such) aren’t really interested in hearing. If I say, “This is the middle of July so why oh why is it only 12 degrees outside?” to the person sitting next to me with equal access to the thermometer, they probably would find my comment (especially after the 4th time) rather annoying. But someone across the globe sitting in 40 degree temps might find it worthy enough to comment back on it! So I tell my thoughts to my list of 275 friends on Facebook. (I limit my list to mostly though not always people that I know or once knew in real life. No total strangers, please!)  That way, I can avoid people looking at me with annoyance in their eyes.  I almost never, ever share pictures of someone’s words on a pretty background. Why use someone else’s words when I have plenty of my own? And I never just share a link without explaining why I’m sharing it. (And while we’re at it, why is it that most people share links without telling us their reason for sharing it? Is it because they are afraid to state their own opinion? Do they even have an opinion, other than *like*?)

While I’m mostly on Facebook, more and more now, I’ve been hanging out on Twitter. I signed up quite awhile ago but for the life of me couldn’t figure out what to do with it. And then Outlander knocked me over like a steam engine going full throttle! In my quest for more information on what has now become my favorite obsession (I’m still working on writing more about that so stay tuned) I turned to Twitter. I admit to not really understanding what Twitter is or how it works but I’m getting better. And the fact that I have to confine myself to just 140 characters I find to be very intimidating. So, mostly I just read what the people and organizations I follow, post. I follow a lot of Outlander related things but have also branched out to follow some news organizations like CNN and The New York Times. I even follow some real people that I know personally! I follow 68 different *people* and actually have 16 people following me! I have set up my Twitter account so that whatever I post there also appears on my Facebook page. Just today I have even been brave enough to comment on what one of the people I follow posted! And she responded to my tweet with a LOL! Her name is Terry Dresbach and she is the costume designer for Outlander. I was so excited she acknowledged me! Outlander has turned me into a bonafide fangirl. OK OK… sound of me fanning myself… calm down Hilarie!

OK, so now I’ve brought you sort of up-to-date on what I spend my time doing on social media.

But sometimes I ask myself why am I spending all my time writing stuff on Facebook but not on Just Hilarie?  I spend a lot of my time thinking. I’ve always liked words and I like writing. At this point in my life it seems like writing down my thoughts and ideas and observations has become more important than drawing pictures. But I don’t think I will ever be a novelist or even a short story writer. I’m not a world-builder. I knew what I didn’t want to write about. I most definitely knew that I wasn’t going to post a photograph of a plate of food and write that the scrambled eggs I ate for breakfast this morning was delish! And I wasn’t going to tell people about the great make up I liked or the dress I saw in a store! That’s fine to put up on Facebook but I wanted to write down what I thought about life! And those thoughts would be well written, with thought given to how the words were used and they would be copy-proofed! I would be an essayist. But what is an essay? Wikipedia (my first go-to place for anything I need to know about after I check Google) says that Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject. Huxley notes that “the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything” and adds that “by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece”. Wow! that sounds exactly like what I want to do!

And that is pretty much what I have been doing. I’ve written about my childhood, my parents, what it’s like growing up to be six feet tall, my love of science fiction, how it is to be a foreigner in a foreign land, how I feel about being Jewish and my mother’s dying. (check out the thought-cloud on the right to read a bit of what I wrote on some of these topics) but because I put so much emphasis on only posting longish, polished, well thought out essays, I don’t publish very often or very much. I have lots of half started unfinished drafts that never see the light of the internet. (This probably has more to do with my terrible lack of self discipline than anything.)

Some of my FB posts can be rather longish, explaining what I think or feel about something – often sparked by something I’ve read in the media. So why am I putting them on Facebook instead of here? Probably because Facebook posts get instant response, instant recognition and Just Hilarie does not. There is a certain kind of repartee, a back-and-forth dialogue generated that is very satisfying. At least to me. If it wasn’t important to me that others read what I write then I would probably just continue to sit here on my sofa letting the words just continue to jumble around in my head and never see daylight.

So my new thing is this. (Remember, I started this post talking about new horizons? Now I’m finally getting to it.)  I will write more often here instead of directly on Facebook. And I will write shorter pieces in-between the longer ones. Or at least that’s the plan. If Facebook or Twitter is the place where people *share* links to articles that others write, then Just Hilarie will be one of those links that I automatically share to my Facebook and Twitter pages using something called Twitterfeed. Friends can then post their comments about my essay on my Facebook page. And I can respond there too. We’ll see how it goes. That’s the nature of horizons. They always look great from a distance.