Place Title of First Post Here

"Winter" Day

My mother was a nurse, and the pediatrician she worked for specialized in diagnosing and treating ADD and ADHD.  Mom's boss was my pediatrician, and he never broached the topic with me.  In hindsight, he may not have been very good at his job.

I am addicted to information and the Internet is my dealer.  I use Google Reader to follow the RSS feeds of thirty-two sites.  Here are my track marks:

I have a recreational Twitter habit that has me only following 112 people at this time (and mostly on the weekends):

I have begun moving some of my information fixes away from the old standbys to that new high that everybody has heard of but nobody has tried, Google+:

Now these numbers are actually pretty modest by the standards of many Internet junkies.  I'm a bit of a snobbish junkie, however.  If a source is not giving me what I need, I pitch it.  I have unsubscribed from countless RSS feeds, un-followed dozens of people, and have been very picky about what ends up in my circles.  I do not have a Facebook account, primarily because I do not have total control over what people send me and there is a real stigma to un-friending those who would waste my time.

In the world of the Internet, I feel I have been taking and taking, but offering little in return.  Of those 721 tweets, the vast majority have been re-tweets of people more clever and I.  I use Google Reader to email off stories that I find interesting to those whom I assume would feel the same.  I fill Google+ with forwarded articles and pictures of my daughter, but know that friends and family who grow tired of my Internet binging can move me to another circle and not bother looking at what I have left at their feet.

So what is this?  I don't really know.  For years I have thought of bloggers as being naive and/or narcissistic.  Who wants to read the thoughts of a nobody?  If they knew what they were talking about, we'd already know who they were.  If their opinions were important, we'd ask for them.  The number of blogs I have stopped reading far outnumbers the number of blogs I am currently reading.  Yet, here I am.  I'm not even being subtle about it.  I'm posting this through Blogger for Pete's sake (sorry Pete, you deserve better).

Let me come clean.  I like to write, and I like to make people laugh.  As I indicated in my opening, I have the attention span of a fruit fly:

This vehicle may be a way to give my wandering brain something to focus on, it will certainly get me writing more than I currently do, and maybe I'll even make a funny once in a while.  I should also admit that this is not my first attempt at pouring my Dixie-Cup of water into the ocean.  Over Christmas Break I bought the domain name NoSnowflake.com.  This was my first attempt at a blog. NoSnowflake was purpose built to be funny, but it really consisted of a bunch of "you had to be there" stories.  I tried too hard to set the stage with each post, and it read (still reads) like a bowl of alphabet soup.

I haven't posted anything for a couple of weeks and I am happy to let NoSnowflake wither on the vine.  There have been a few things that have happened of late, however, that are pushing me back towards the water.  I read +Michelle Marie's post "10 Important Tips for Google+ Beginners" that was trending on Google+'s What's Hot stream, and though the fundamental concepts were about growing your online community, the plea to create original content rang home for me.  Shorty after reading that post, I came across two alums on Twitter.  @willwashburn and @Khaliqgant are former students, dormitory proctors, and basketball players I had the pleasure of working with.  Now out of college, they have started an online business called Social Blendr.  They are bright, driven, and funny.  I love that they are taking on this huge challenge.  Through them, I came across two more of their classmates, @cmerrick and @SarahMBender on the Twitters.  I'm a huge fan of Chris and Sarah, though this is not a couple I would want to go up against at a trivia night.  It turns out that on the side, Sarah has her own blog, Served By Sarah.  Not only has her work made me hungry, it has given me another blog to follow.

So I sit here in front of my computer screen taking in gigs of data.  I made one feeble attempt to add something original and then folded up my tent.  After being encouraged to create some content, I come across a group of old students of mine doing creative things and making the interwebs a more interesting place.  It appears I am going to be the naive narcissist I looked down upon for years.  If you look at the number of times "I" has appeared in this post, you can see that I'm on the right track.

There is no plan and no formula.  I want to write more, and we live in an age when if something cannot be found on the Internet, it does not exist.  I know my wife will read this, and if I make myself laugh every now and then, it will be a good exercise.