Okay, I’ll let you in on a not-so-secret secret. If I see you in public, I will probably not say “Hi” to you. I will probably turn and walk, maybe even run, the other way. If I can’t get away, I’ll avoid eye contact and hope you don’t notice me. It’s not that I don’t like you, I just don’t want to bother you. I don’t want to interrupt your life for mine.

That’s why it was so difficult for me to join Facebook. Why give up my internet privacy when nobody would be interested in my profile anyway? And why invite anyone to be a friend? I haven’t seen some of these people in forever and they have much more important things to do.

But I joined anyway. Amy told me that part of having a successful website is creating a network. So I joined facebook–but I dragged Amy along with me so that I’d have at least one friend. It took me a couple of days but I finally invited my first friend (besides Amy), one of my better friends from high school with whom I had lost contact. I slept poorly that night, but the next morning I had a friend. Someone else I knew from college had also found me and invited me to be their friend. Maybe this isn’t so bad after all.

Now to be more like Amy–remember I’m trying to learn what she’s learned/learning–I joined a forum for teachers today. It’s a little more anonymous and it will take me a little while to figure out how it all works, but I actually introduced myself and posted a couple of times. Not only that, but people responded to my intorduction. Wow!

It will still take me a little while to get up the nerve to contact all the facebook people I know and I will probably still hide from them if I see them in the store, but I’m making progress. Who would thunk this would be so therapeutic?