I often think about how being a blogger has sort of skewed the way I think, act, behave.

You see, I’m the only one of my friends who has one. Not, you know, the friends I have stashed all over the world; the friends I have met since I started blogging in 2004. No, I’m talking about the friends I have who don’t write for a living, who don’t sit at computers all day, who don’t know what Pinterest is, who don’t know what I mean when I respond to a text message with “Blergh.” They are orthodontists and dentists and oral pathologists (Yes. My friends tend to skew towards the teeth, which is funny, because I rarely go to the dentist. SHH! Don’t tell!) teachers and speech therapists and engineers and scientists and lawyers and doctors and all sorts of things I know nothing about (Ask me what my husband does for a living. Go on…ask!).

(Answer: *Shrugs* Something with computers?)

They are a great many wonderful things, but they are not like me. They are not involved in heavy relationships with social media. They don’t even use the phrase SOCIAL MEDIA. They don’t consider facebook, twitter, pinterest, klout, wordpress, instagram as anything much more than, well, things that people like Ali use on the internet. They don’t question whether or not people are still using Google+. They don’t stress about things like hosts and CSS and web design and OMG MY SITE IS DOWN CALL THE WEBSITE POLICE WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!! They don’t find out all of their news from Twitter. They don’t know, or care, about RSS feeds or page views or analytics or SEO. They don’t care what an em-dash is. They don’t photograph food, clothing, or possible photography props to ask the internet which wooden bench they should buy. They don’t know who Dooce is. They don’t think in hashtags. They don’t think about how many times a day it’s appropriate to link to a single post (I say two, unless you are SharonDV. She can tweet hers as many times as she wants to.) They have never gotten into a Twitter fight with the author of Sarah’s Key. They don’t write about being emotionally connected to fictional characters. 

They don’t—when their 9-year-old son comes into their bedroom at night wearing every single pair of pajamas he owns (Look Mama! I’m Chism from The Biggest Loser!)—immediately write about it on Twitter and Facebook and immediately take a picture.

They don’t think, “I wonder how many people on Twitter will make a Friends reference?”

They don’t think, “I better not Instagram the picture right away. This material is GOLD, and everyone knows that using all the good stuff on the weekend is a waste!”

They don’t think, “I wonder which medium will have the better response, Twitter or Facebook?” (Answer: For me, it’s always Facebook. Always.)

No. They don’t. They probably snicker about it, and send their son off to bed.

Not I, of course.

THIS is what I do.

So, I’m kind of the black sheep of my friends and family.

But I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make my children recreate something cute that they did so I can tweet it, instagram it, and probably put it up on Facebook. 

Who am I kidding, really? Definitely put it on Facebook.