So Where Do We Fit In This Social Circle?

I’m in a social quandary.  A Facebook social quandary, if you will.  Egads…my geek is showing.

So when this all began, I joined the bright, shiny world of Facebook and hooked up with my old friends.  They’re lawyers now.  Engineers.  Teachers.  Escorts.  (We’re a varied bunch.)  The annoying girl in high school that I didn’t like?  Didn’t friend her.  The best friend that moved away when he was ten?  Friended him.

And my newer friends, of course.  People that we moved away from.  People that I see every other day.  Whatever.  Every now and then somebody would slip through that I really didn’t have much of a relationship with (“Oh no, she friended me!  She friended me and if I don’t friend her back, she’ll be all over me about it!  But I don’t want to spend any more time with her, nooooooooo…”) and an Internet friend or two.  (Or four or twelve.  But at least I talk to them.)  And then maybe a writer that I’ve come across a few times.  Then there are requests from writers that I’ve never run across at all.  I ignore these requests, because hey, this is my personal (ish) space!

And then my family showed up.  I am so screwed.

Not because my family isn’t cool, because they are.  But it’s like a party where you’re mixing your friends together, and you’re not sure how it’s going to come off.  Hey, theatre friends, meet my newspaper friends.  Church friends, these are my hardcore friends.  Family, these are my horror writer friends.  Everybody just ignore that obscene guy in the corner there; he’s not good with crowds, but he bakes a mean creampuff.

It’s also not like I’m afraid of my “wild Friday night” pictures showing up elsewhere, because seriously, I have nothing to show.  But I also don’t want two trillion friends that I don’t talk to.  It’s annoying.

So how do you differentiate these separate aspects of your lives?  Do you?  Or does it just become one big jumble?  I tried really hard to keep things separate.  This is my writing blog.  The writing blog is about writing.  I also have a Williams Syndrome blog, and it’s about Williams.  I don’t want to bore one group of people with something that doesn’t apply to what their looking for.  Please don’t creep out of the nice, tidy compartments that I have placed you in.  But on the other hand…since when have I ever been good about staying inside the lines?  Maybe I should just stop worrying about it, and let everybody enjoy the party.  I have a feeling one of the sewing friends and the music friends just might end up making out in the back room.

Advice?  Words of wisdom?  Want to hook up with the music friend?  Do you use Facebook (or MySpace or The Haunt) for friendship, or writing networking?

0 Comments on “So Where Do We Fit In This Social Circle?”

  1. Don’t sweat it. FB is for every kind of friend. I have the same jumble and it all seems to work out just fine. And then every once in a while I’ll get a PM from my sister asking who that freak with the ninja mask is. Which, incidentally, I’ll introduce you to in exchange for that music friend. (I’m a music guy too — didja know?)

  2. BigPlainYou- No, what kind of music? I play the piano and sing. What do you want? Lead singer? Guitarist? Drummer? I have three, and they’re all writers. Gimme your ninja.

    Wait, this could be the beginnings of an official game starting tomorrow! Hmmm…

  3. I’m running into weird stuff in those places, too. I have my writing blog which is read almost exclusively by writers, then my family blog, which is ready a a few family members, LinkedIn, which is all DayJob business contacts, and then FB, which is a weird mix of them all. The thing that sucks is I now find myself not wanting to post certain things on FB because I have co-workers are up there, and I don’t want to talk much about writing on my LinkedIn, nor about DayJob on my blogspot, because my company has more lawyers than janitors and loves to find ways to get rid of people without a severance package. It’s made me wary of who to add to which network…but for my part, it’s not a personal thing, per se, it’s more of a defense mechanism against getting myself in trouble.

  4. I have some inside experience with this. At first I too had trepidation about the spheres mixing (or in my case, the mom and the step-mom mixing. Also the work and the rock mixing)
    But I think that our little safe compartments, the fractured facets that we call a balanced life, ought to always be broken down and flattened.
    Facebook is good at reminding yourself (and letting others know) this is me. All these facets, all these conflicting moods and expressions and likes and dislikes–they are all me.
    ok… so after that little rant…

    Are we starting a band? a virtual band.
    I’m in. Atlas Takes Aim can go on the back burner. I’m playing accordian!

  5. I’m probably just naive, but I really think my friends are the awesomest people on the planet, and I would loooooove to get them all in a room together to party. And hey, the less-than-friends FB “friends” can come, too, but only if they’re willing to play nicely.

  6. Simple…I only use it for promoting my work. And that’s it. If i get requested by someone, I’ll accept if they are a writer or of I knew them back-when. But nothing else.

  7. I only use facebook for connecting with other writers… Actually, I don’t use facebook much at all and still have no idea how I ended up with an account.

  8. I don’t have enough of a social life to have to compartmentalize much. I have my “horror life,” some snippets of “civilian” life, and time I spend on the couch.

    If someone not in horror wants to friend me on Myspace, I figure they must have a reason. Or they are just adding names and won’t bug me either way.

  9. Hi Mercedes.

    My wife talked me into signing up with Facebook last fall. At first it was really cool linking up with old high school friends (I now live on the opposite coast of the country).

    I connect with near and distant relatives, work friends, school friends but so far no writing friends (not that I wouldn’t mind). I find, though, that I network more with other writers through blogs rather than Facebook.

    BTW, I enjoy your blog.

  10. Facebook, right now, is only for connecting with old friends for me. I might eventually consider getting a second account for purely writing related stuff, one that I’d probably just connect with my twitter account for ease of updating two places at once. I would definitely never consider my current facebook account anything resembling “professional” … never ever.

  11. Do I differentiate? Heck no! I love people and all are welcome to friend me. If they don’t like each other, then they can unfriend me. Simple as that. 🙂

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