I’m going to be completely honest here.  Before I decided to go on this journey of mine I was not on Instagram, or Twitter.  I don’t know how to Snap Chat or Vine and I have never ever had a Facebook page or a MySpace account (yes, I’m that old to remember where it all began).  I subscribed to all of zero blogs and YouTube was merely something to occupy my 3 yr olds time.  I was on Pinterest but I hadn’t “pinned” a single thing.  And I wasn’t even on LinkedIn (talk about asking for it) until a few weeks before I was let go — which BTW I have yet to edit because I’m digitally linked to my family on there and changing my status would let the cat out of the bag.  And I’m just not ready for that yet, I’m still holding out for Oprah.

In any event, my go to response for all of these little failures to communicate was this — I am married with kids and I’m just not that social (or so I thought) and I don’t have time to “play.”  My life was my (former) job and my job required none of these skills from me so I asked for nothing from them in return.

Now I call them skills because if you don’t know how to do any of these things you understand real quick just how “skilled” some people are at these platforms.  I can say this emphatically because setting up this blog has been a huge wake up call for me.  Never in my life have people spoken so many words I don’t have definitions for and I know I’m struggling to keep up and wise up.  These are powerful and valuable ways to authentically reach people and connect, to have your voice or art or image or words come directly through you and from you to anyone and everyone.  And there are so many people doing a brilliant job of redefining our futures and enhancing our experiences every single second in these very ways.  And it’s nothing short of amazing!

So what in the H -E double toothpicks was I thinking?  I mean, I knew an entire industry was practically born overnight and booming, I do watch the news and I did spend countless hours on-line at work — but how did the global impact of these apps not even graze me?   I have an iPhone, I swear!  Well, here is the embarrassing truth — I wrote them off as for the “younger generation” and for single people.  I know, I’m sorry!  I wasn’t thinking nor was I paying enough attention to appreciate their impact on connecting with people in my own life to enrich my own experience.  Until now.  And what a wake up call.  I needed to open up and catch up!

But before I could move forward, I had to do just that, open up.  Open up and get to the real source of my technical difficulties.   And here goes…

You know that family member you make fun of because they can’t text or use their smartphone, well, I feel like that sister/aunt/mom/grandmother.  I can use it, I can email, I can text, I can take photos and even edit them!  But that’s about it.  I’ve resisted learning anything that I couldn’t put a tangible measure on for the most part.  But what’s more interesting is why.   Why I resisted and why I let these extremely useful skills pass me by — for more than a decade!

As it turns out, this decision to choose happy actually has everything to do with facing my why (fear) head on.  Because these things are directly in line with my creativity and my passions, Instagram, Pinterest — they are totally in my wheelhouse and mass amounts of fun!  So again, why?  Well, I know exactly why and better yet exactly when too.  I will never ever forget it.  It all started with MP3s and a less than patient boyfriend who made me feel stupid.

It was 15 years ago.  I can still remember the red Ikea chair he was sitting in, in my apartment in Venice, he was wearing a white shirt and blue shorts, grey canvas sneakers with thin cracked rubber soles.  A half eaten sandwich was on his right as I sat to his his left peering over him at an awkward angle to eliminate the glare of the sun on the screen.   Simply put, he could not understand how in the world I wasn’t able to follow his less than stellar explanation of how to get the music from my computer to my MP3 player.  iPods did not yet exist.

I remember the frustration on his face like it was yesterday and how his words were so carefully chosen — chosen to leave a mark.  And wow, scar they did, look at everything I let pass me by.  And for what?  Ugh.  I know without a doubt that was the exact moment I stopped keeping up with technology and started relying on others to do it for me.  All because I let someone else tell me I couldn’t do it — and then worse, I believed it.

So, for everyone reading this and thinking, what an a-hole, thank you!  He was, and for so so so so sooooo many other reasons.  But really, I’m the idiot here.  Or was the idiot.  Because I’m over it now.  I’m accepting this “ugly” of mine and admitting the truth for the very first time and getting myself up to speed.  And that’s what’s most important, I’m dancing, I’m doing it, I’m learning it — all of it, now and with a happy vengeance.  It might have taken me a really really really long time to get over that defining moment but I can recognize it for what it was now, a speck in time that no longer holds any power over me.  And I’m thankful for this experience to allow me to fess up because even then I knew I could run circles around that guy intellectually, but I’m the one who chose to let him scare into thinking otherwise.  And I’ve sat this one out for waaayyyy too long.