My History with Social Media

 I began this blog sometime back in 2010, either before or after my second book came out, as a way to market and to connect with other writers. It wasn't my first go round. Does anyone remember AOL? It had a basic blog format where I wrote personal entries to share with my family. Then one day AOL disappeared along with my posts.

When Google developed Blogger, easy to use and very popular, I signed up. Those of us who have been at it for awhile will remember how fun it was in those early days when followers and comments showed up in droves. It seemed like everyone was starting a blog, especially writers. 

Facebook was growing as well. Soon Twitter was a thing and I signed up there too. All over social media, blogging friends found and followed each other.

I had a nice, long fling with Facebook, who I'm currently mad at and ready to break up with. It won't let me share these posts on my page, saying they are offensive and against their standards. What? I write about simple, everyday things, never anything controversial.

As far as other social media, I'm on Instagram and Pinterest but never go there. I signed up for TikTok a year ago when one of my sons had a viral post. It was fun to see it get all those views for awhile. When that ended, so did my relationship with TikTok. I hate it there. Feels so frenetic and disjointed, definitely not my thing.

Interesting how my history with social media began with blogging and is ending the same way, back to the very same blog I started in 2010. It's nice that Blogger is still here, still easy to use, void of Facebook's foolish, discriminatory rules. 

There are even a few of the same blogging buddies from the early days, although they don't post or comment nearly as often. None of us do--it's amazing that we're still active here at all. 

I found some wonderful new blogs through the A to Z Challenge. I love spending a quiet hour in the afternoons scrolling through my Reading List and seeing the updates of new posts to read and comment on. Only there's not enough of you. I enjoy following blogs on all kinds of topics and I only wish I could find more.

What to do when you don't want to do anything

 We all have those days. Lately I've had too many of them. What does one do when productivity seems to flee and you don't feel like chasing it down? 

My recent time-waster has been watching reality cooking shows. I was really into Guy's Grocery Games with Guy Fieri, who I think is so cute and charming, a bigger than life personality. He often brings his family into his shows, which I admire. He and his wife have been married over 20 years and they have two sons who Guy is obviously quite proud of. The oldest, Hunter, has gone to college and joined his dad in his media/food business.

I was watching episodes of Guy's Grocery Games every evening on HBO Max until they found out I was in Mexico using a VPN. What the heck? That's the point of a VPN. It hides your location so you can watch shows broadcast to the US when you're in Mexico. Well, it didn't work anymore and HBO Max diverted me from the US service to the Mexico Max service. No more Guy's Grocery Games.

Fine then. On Mexico HBO Max I got into Chopped, another reality cooking show similar to Guy's, where chef contestants have to compete against each other while cooking weird things according to the game rules. Chopped is a long-running show of many seasons and episodes, except that only a few seasons are streamed to Mexico Max. 

When I ran out of Chopped episodes, I found a few interesting cooking contests hosted by Gordon Ramsey, who is also cute and charming, as long as his swearing is bleeped out. So lately it's been Master Chef with Gordon Ramsey. Unfortunately, it also streams only a few episodes to Mexico.

I'm not sure what my obsession is with reality cooking shows but they sure help to pass the time. In only a few weeks, I move back to America where I won't need a VPN and I can watch whatever the heck I want. But then I won't need to fill the empty hours because I will be near my family where there's always something going on of greater interest than TV.

I came to Mexico in 2020 on what was meant to be a three- month retreat in a tropical climate near the beach. For reasons too numerous to explain, it turned into my home for four years. And now I am leaving, more than ready to go, and simply filling the time until these few weeks pass when I get on that plane to Salt Lake. 

I like to cook and eat while watching the cooking shows. This is my stacked salad topped with spicy beans and honey mustard dressing.