This week's mammoth task has been the preparation of a Business Plan for my Creative GLEAM tutor, Jan, whom I am meeting with tomorrow. It's been another head down job with Wonderhubby holding the fort which necessitated a break on Sunday afternoon - a lovely bike-ride with Wonderhubby and Teen 2 down the country lanes of Northumberland, views across the golden wheat, ripe in the fields, which soon puts cash flow forecasts into perspective.
For the past few months I've kept getting messages from Facebook - there's a whole backlog of people, from my screenwriter's group, who all want to be my friend which is really quite sweet but they want to write on my wall, which I'm really not sure about . There's lots of names that I don't recognise but if I saw their faces I probably would. However, if I saw their 'profiles' I probably wouldn't. Finally, I decide that I'd better do something about the queue of unopened emails stacking up in my inbox, some going back to May. It's not that I'm unfriendly or untrusting of kind messages from people who aren't my blood relations, but I take the ostrich stance; if I ignore Facebook for long enough it just might go away.
I did try it once, at the beginning, when I was first invited to join my screenwriter's group. To me, it was just a mass of accidental pages. Call me old fashioned, but when I send out a message, I like to know where it's going and who's going to see it. Write a message on Facebook and it could end up anywhere or not at all - just floating around, lost in cyperspace then landing somewhere 'totally random' as Teen 2 would say. I think that perhaps one day a clever mathematician might assign some kind of algebraic formulation to it, but to me it just looks like the chaos theory.
However, Teen 1 decides its time I grasp the nettle and with infinite patience (takes after her Dad on that one) guides me around Facebook, helping me to visit and leave nice (I don't do post-modern ironic) comments to those who have been good enough to include me as a friend. She makes out a chart for me to follow on a piece of paper. Tells me what all the pages do and how they interact with each other and who can see what information and messages. The route of communication still resembles all the potential synapses in a human brain, but with the diagram it's a start. I find it's like learning to drive - a bit of practice and I start to gain confidence. In fact, I really start to warm to the community and its banter and as a budding entrepreneur can see that it might be a great way to get my message out there. Even start a Facebook for listenupnorth.com...
This week, I read about some well meaning body's concern for kids and their online social networking - is it a substitute for developing real social skills? Well, I suppose yes and no. Of course it is both mentally and physically unhealthy to spend all day sitting in front of a computer screen, but I don't think we should dismiss social networking out of hand (one afternoon on it and suddenly I'm an expert). I suppose people blamed Alexander Bell for the demise in letter writing. But surely we have actually started to write again and interact, our networks casting further than ever before and that can be a good thing? Even if only a fraction of what we communicate to each other online survives, it would still be a invaluable social comment about the lives of ordinary people living in this age, up there with the Vindolanda Tablets or Pepys diary.
Surely the the question is - is the online social networking scene in addition to or instead of getting together with your friends? When I see my Teens talking to their friends on MSN and Facebook, it seem just a natural progression for them. They look on it as a way of keeping in touch - with university friends and old school friends over the hols. Teen 1 has just been re-discovered by a friend who moved away after junior school. Online networking doesn't mean that they stop enjoying each other's company; Teen 1 has just returned today, rather tired, after a meet-up on the beach and sleepover with old school friends - best not to ask.
Still it's good to have your 3D friends. I first met Helen through a local am dram and she has kindly agreed to take the lead role in my latest audio production 'Oranges and Lemons'. We will be meeting up for a readthrough later this week - so watch this space. One of the treats I allow myself when I have been working hard is to go around to her beautiful stencilled home for a chat with a group of friends, where Helen spoils me with a frothy hot chocolate with extra chocolate sprinkled on the top using one of her cappucinno stencils.
It was Helen who really sold me the idea and concept of blogging - the benefits and of course the fun. I was really glad, before starting, to go round to her house for the evening where she showed me the basics of putting a blog together and demystified the process. So here I am and of course it's just the start of the learning curve.
Helen not only uses her blog Design Inspiration to demonstrate what wonderful arty things can be achieved with the stencils from her business The Stencil Library, but also the fascinating things she gets up to such as her recent address at a conference in Memphis in a stencilled Elvis skirt which was also featured in the local newspaper The Hexham Courant. In the same newspaper this week were the shocking revelations about the local community radio station where 2 directors stormed into a show and pulled the plug which must have dissapointed at least 6 listeners. The aggrieved presenter of the show, a retired librarian no less, was one of the members of a rebellious steering comittee, all of whom were unceremoniously sacked. And you thought things were lively in Gordon Brown's cabinet.
