As I stand at the crossroads of 54, there’s an invigorating sense of anticipation that courses through my veins. The next quarter-century stretches ahead, filled with countless opportunities, dreams waiting to be realized, and experiences ready to be embraced. It’s a remarkable feeling, akin to standing on the cusp of something truly magical.
One thing that fuels my excitement is the notion of finding a partner to share this incredible journey with. Love, as I’ve come to realize, is like a powerful drug that infuses every aspect of our lives with meaning and vitality. Just as a drug can ignite our senses and make us feel alive, so too can love awaken our hearts and souls. It’s a force that brings out the best in us, inspires us to be better versions of ourselves, and reminds us that life is a beautiful tapestry of shared moments.
At 54, I wholeheartedly believe that love isn’t a finite resource; it’s an abundant wellspring that flows endlessly. As I look forward to the next 25 years, I’m filled with a hopeful desire to cultivate and nurture love in all its forms. Whether it’s romantic love, the love of friends and family, or even the love we extend to ourselves, there’s an infinite capacity within us to give and receive this precious gift.
As I ponder the dreams that I hold for the future, I’m reminded of the quote, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” And create it, I shall. There’s a world of experiences waiting to be discovered, dreams waiting to be chased, and goals waiting to be achieved. These next 25 years are my canvas, and I plan to paint it with the vibrant colors of adventure, growth, and fulfillment.
Speaking of colors, I can’t help but think about the vibrant hues of health and happiness that I wish for my friends as we journey forward. As we navigate the complexities of life, I hope that each of my friends finds a path paved with good health, boundless joy, and the kind of laughter that lifts the spirit. It’s these cherished relationships that make life truly rich, and I’m excited to continue sharing memories, stories, and laughter with them in the years to come.
So here’s to the next 25 years—a tapestry woven with dreams, fueled by love, and graced with the presence of dear friends. As I step into this new chapter of life, I’m reminded that age is just a number, but the enthusiasm and zest for life are timeless. Let’s embrace each day with an open heart, a determined spirit, and an unshakeable belief that the best is yet to come.
There are two aspects to social web… where your peeps are and features to communicate.
Where your peeps are
Social media has been around for quite a long time. Long before Facebook and people have moved from network to network. You follow your friends to the next big thing and hope that most people will join you. When the first iPhones came out there was a social network called iRovr. At the time, Apple was trying to convince developers to create web based apps that would be used with Safari. They tried for a while until they decided to create the App Store and that’s when Social really changed for the online community.
We had a bunch of new Apps come around for social, like 4Square, Treehouse, and more. The communities were small to begin with and like anything, the cost to maintain the networks became overwhelming and difficult to do. And they have since gone by the waste side.
But then the mega social media websites battled it out, MySpace and Facebook came on the scene, and Facebook won out with a more consistent look and feel.
There were plenty of other online communities out there, whether you think of AOL and chat rooms, some dating apps created themselves as a ad hoc social media app as well. And do you even care where your peeps are? Or do you just want to find new peeps?
Features
Really it’s all about what it can do. What information can you share? How easy is it for you to use? What features do they offer?
Does it have a Web and App interface?
Is it offered on both iOS and Android?
Can you upload photos from your phone?
Does it have built in GIFs to respond to comments?
What kind of emojis can you use to respond to posts? Can you just ❤️ a post or have more reactions?
How do the comments work?
Can you search the network?
Is hashtagging a thing?
Can you tag your friends?
Are there communities within the app?
How are the privacy settings?
How much scrolling can you do?
What is the situation with videos, creating and remixing?
Given everything we know the new social media offerings of 2023 seem to suggest that change is the only constant we have going on. Some will live and some will die on the vine. Here’s the big media players.
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
X (Maybe) Formerly Twitter
Threads
Mastodon
BlueSky
Snapchat
TikTok
What do you use? How do you like to engage the social media landscape?
It did not take long for the “Twitterverse” to respond to the purchase of the platform by attempting to fragment the Microblogging community. I’ve been watching a lot of different things happening and it seems like an apropos time to talk about it.
Should you stay or do you go?
Isn’t that what the Clash sang? I think I’ve heard a lot of strong arguments for both, but the question in my mind is who owns the intellectual content that you have created and uploaded to the platform. The Terms of Service that you had could be changed at any time. We have already seen that policies have changed quickly by the new CEO without regards to the affect that it has on the user base.
I have a lot of content on the platform. It consists of Posts, Media, Likes, Direct Messages (DMs). Should I be concerned? Some pretty tech savvy people, like Leo Laporte have used services to remove all of their content from the platform, including unliking tweets, unretweeting, and deleting content. I have to say I am becoming a fan of this.
The argument to stay
is that you just keep doing your thing and let it bother the powers that be.
The argument to leave
is that you don’t let one person control your content and what you see. And by leaving you hurt the bottom line of a the company’s financials, since they won’t have as many active users to market to.
For those leaving, where to do you go?
This really depends because people want the Twitter experience without the drama. What is the twitter experience that people want? Anonymity, conversation, breaking information, and community. I think that’s what we came here for.
But there is a sort of vacuum that was created as people went into the diaspora that people leaving twitter have fallen into. So enter the biggest plan which is join the Federation, Mastodon, this link is one of many servers you can sign up for that will give you access to community and beyond. It’s a twitter-lite system. It’s missing some features, but I’m sure this will become enhanced in time. Just like any Social Media system, there are rules and moderation.
You could go to MeWe.com, CounterSocial, WT.com, or find community in a Discord Server or Slack Channel.
Old School Blogging
But if you’re like me, old school is old school. Buy a web domain, and set up a WordPress or other blog and blog for real. You CAN do it! WordPress has a very large community and you can own your own content and still connect with others doing comments and liking their posts. It might not be great for following 1000 accounts and having endless scrolling, but I assure you, the quality will be better.
Nothing Lasts for Ever
Just remember, nothing lasts forever. There were tech giants that have come and gone. Where is Netscape, Yahoo, Excite, Ask.com, Lycos, MySpace, and AOL these days? Sure they might be around in some capacity, but they are not real players. They are the Kmart and Sears of tech. They had their day. We will continue to see the human online experience change and grow. It’s a sign of the times.
So I really don’t do casual friendship for the most part. You’re either my friend or you’re not.
You could be a. Acquaintance but that may just be a social connection. I have a lot of those for sure.
But to be a FRIEND, that’s sort of being elevated to a level of importance in my life. It means I will connect with you, as my empathetic mind works.
Friendships are relationships. Like it or not they are, and so much more. They are the place where we store secrets and they are the place where we laugh. It is the place where we smile and the place where we cry.
Friendships are the real connections that mean we help each other for no other reason than because we are friends.
Some friends don’t connect for a long time, but when they do, it was like they never skipped a beat.
Some friends check in regularly because they know they need that heart beat.
Friendships do change as we grow older, and time marches on.
We are busy with life and things that make it seem so hard.
But I am sure with the few friends I have, they are my diamonds in the rough, the realist friends that help me out when things are really tough.
I think it is damn hard to have a conversation with yourself and say, this is who I am. We are put into boxes in this world. People tell us that we need to act and behave a certain way. Love a certain way. This is society and the importance to fit in has always been something to strive for just to have some peace in your life.
But we are not all the same.
-SailorJ
We come from different backgrounds, genders, races, ethnicities, cultures, identities. And yet we are funneled into the homogeny that says we all are the same.
I have lived the life of conformity. You learn to speak in a certain way. Walk in a certain way. You are focused to get married, get a house, have kids, the dog and cat and goldfish. I escaped from some of that, but something inside me has always said that I’m different.
I believe that we all go through moments in our lives when we think maybe our calling, our direction should be one way. When we look back as I can do now, it is crazy to think how my life would have been different if I followed another path. If I did not have the burden of society and what others said and thought driving me away from my authentic self.
Acceptance is so important to allowing people to be their authentic self. We are living at a time in the world where people have had the opportunity to explore and be themselves and in a blink of an eye, the world changed and tried to take away the individuals right to be who they are and love who they want.
Society plays a role in an individual’s ability to be who they were meant to be. Even just allowing someone to exist without fear is a very important thing. People need to be able to exist in the comfort of their own skin and in their own mind. When they are, they are the most productive and their love is at its highest.
There are a lot of people who are “losing their minds” over this election. Personally, I am impressed by how many people voted in this election. There were around 150 Million Americans that participated in the 2020 Presidential Election. This didn’t just include electing a president, but also congress and most importantly, so many local elections and ballot initiatives.
But here we are, in a divided country. As I see it, the country is split between Trump Republicans and Democrats of many different flavors. By some slim margins, Biden won a few states that took him over the top, such as in Georgia, which went Democrat or “Blue” for the first time in over 30+ years.
What is different this time has been how the current President is treating this election. He is fighting the results, unlike every other President and Presidential candidate before him. We are seeing just about every challenge to the election process squashed and courts siding with election officials as there simply is no evidence of election fraud.
Our Country needs to get together. We have spent a lot of energy on both sides saying things like he’s not my president, regardless of party for at least the last 25 years as I know it. Bush wasn’t your President, neither was Clinton, or Obama, and Trump. So Biden isn’t your President either. You may not like the person, but that person IS The President. And yes, while I write this, the electoral college still has to cast the official votes for President, those electors are selected through a process that is from the victors of each state. So basically those electors have an obligation to vote for whom their State has decided to cast its ballots for. If they don’t they are faithless electors and there are consequences possible for doing that.
At this point in history, I’m ready to move on with a new vision. If the Democrats can bring all the factions to the table and work as a team, they have a real chance. If they use a bully pulpit, like Trump has done, they have no chance.
I know a lot of people think that we have been standing on the precipice of history, and I agree. There are a lot of people with hate in their hearts, and I do believe that Love did Conquer Hate during this election. Decency beat misery. The problem is, it only barely beat it, and we are all left scratching our head asking why. Over the next 4 years, maybe minds can be changed and we can return to normalcy. If we can’t, the world may become a much darker place. I’m going to look forward towards the light.
It is June, 2020. The United States of America and the World are going through some fundamental core shake up moments.
The Corona Virus or COVID-19, has been a world wide pandemic causing people to social distance, work from home if able, and millions have become unemployed as a result. This has led to diminished incomes, and increased poverty throughout the world.
Many businesses won’t come back from this, while new opportunities will reveal themselves as we get moving into the next year.
George Floyd
In late May, a black man, George Floyd, was detained by police officers in Minneapolis, pushed to the ground, handcuffed and an officer placed his knee on his throat an kept it there for over 7 minutes while George pleaded for mercy and his life. All of this was photographed.
The outrage has been felt like a shot heard round the world. People are protesting and marching in the name of George Floyd, but also the many other Black lives that have been killed in police custody. The Black Lives Moment is actively drawing attention to this in a way that sadly, Colin Kaepernick could not do.
#blacklivesmatter
You can not hold up a bible and claim to be a good person. Love your neighbor as yourself is fundamental to scripture, even with all the horrible things that is written in that book. It takes more than standing in front of a church with a book in your hand to bring people together. After all, it is written, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The really story about that passage comes many verses before that, because Cain kills Abel due to his jealousy. This issue is about how we treat our fellow human beings. This issue is how Black people are treated in our society.
Protesting
I have heard it said, or seen it written, that no one gets to tell you how to protest. I agree with that sentiment, and I agree with it because unfortunately the biggest changes in this world have come from violence.
Let’s face it. This country was founded on violence with a revolutionary war. Then we had a civil war. We fought in Wars around the world, in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East. Whether the violence is internal or external, it seems that violence is part of our history.
In one of the articles above, they explain that while Martin Luther King used non-violent protests as a method of creating change, he did it in a way to provoke violence from his adversaries, to create sympathy for his movement.
The Outliers
If you saw any of these types of Memes on one of your chosen social media platforms, understand that this isn’t coming from the black lives matter groups. Trust me, there are a lot of people who are using this protesting time as an opportunity. There are rogue players out there that want to see us all at odds with each other.
To think that Black American’s are not veteran’s, and equal members of our society is the problem. The meme above disgraces Blacks, Whites, Asians, Hispanics, and all other ethnicities and creeds. But this meme was meant to divide us. Don’t be fooled.
The Biggest Change will come in your Heart.
There is a reality that many of us live in a semi segregated society. Sure we encounter people who look different than ourself on occasion. But how many of us have neighbors that are People of Color? What are your experiences with Black people, or if you are Black, of White people? People who live in more densely populated areas probably have more regular interactions with people of all ethnicities, and that is a good thing.
We have to remember that people are individuals, Love each person for who they are. Get to know your neighbors. Get to understand that people have different life experiences that have brought them to this moment in time and you may very well be fortunate enough to make this friend.
It’s not easy to change decades of prejudice and hate over night. But we can do it.
BLM, Kaepernick and the Police
Just in case you thought I missed it, let’s highlight one important thing. This issue is about institutionalize racism in police departments nation wide. This is the problem that the Black Lives Matter group is trying to solve. People are tired of police officers killing Black people. There simply is not video after video of other minorities that have been brutally mishandled by police officers in the way that Black people have in the US, nation wide. Kaepernick tried to highlight the problem protesting in the NFL, but audience which tends to be Conservative White men couldn’t hear the message, and just saw him spitting on their beloved flag, which of course he did NOT do at all.
Was this the catalyst to bring the change in America that is needed? I hope this is it. I really hope we don’t need another Black person to die at the hands of police to fix the problem. Police should be there to uphold the law. They should protect and serve. We need police in our society, just as we need firemen, and all other public servants. But they work for us. When I was in the Navy, I remembered that it was an honor and a privilege to be a member of the Armed Forces.
There needs to be a national code of conduct for police. Treating everyone fair and equally under the law. Should be part of it.
This moment in time
It’s hard in this moment in time. There are so many moving parts to the world happening. It is not just this one thing and sometimes it is just one thing. But the barrage of imagery showing violence can bring you down. The barrage of imagery of people losing their jobs, and masks and isolation can bring you down. We are more divided than ever.
In this moment in time, say no more.
In this moment in time, say I will not let hate divide me. In this moment in time be the best human being you can be, and bring about the positive change in the world that helps the betterment of all humankind.
So it’s Taco Tuesday. I had tacos for lunch, then couldn’t think what I wanted for dinner, so I had tacos again. I made them at home, so it wasn’t like I went out to eat. The truth is I’m not eating out all that much. I have leftovers for tomorrow as well. I could make Mexican, but I have baked pasta that I will be making. I also picked up a few things over at the store today and so I’ll have good things to make at home.
I’m getting my runs happening and trying to get outside as much as possible. Even a few minutes at the beach is worth it. Tomorrow its another great beach day I’m sure, and hoping to get more sun. Staying active is what it’s all about.
