Six New Things

What with the giant void left post-election and the absence of Palinodies to watch over and over, I’ve had to find some new ways to occupy my time. As is my typical style, I’ve gone overboard and signed up for virtually everything.

First I decided to run the Atlanta Marathon in March, which means I committed to a rigorous training schedule for the next 5 months. Then I joined a book club because a cool liberal lawyer with great taste in shoes invited me. Next I signed up for Zumba classes every Wednesday night, remembered that I have to take a class and study for (and pass) two standardized exams to keep my new SC teaching license, Top Chef New York premiered two Wednesdays ago, and I joined Facebook.

I never thought I’d have a Facebook page. In fact, at the New Teacher Orientation for my school district last August, I had to sit through a really long and boring lecture cautioning us against posting pictures of ourselves nude on Facebook. I tuned most of it out, figuring (a) Surely no one with an education degree is that stupid and (b) "Facebook? That's for 20-somethings looking to hook up."

But then, in one of those weird weekends full of cosmic signs, friends from five different locations across the country invited me to be part of the collective and I found resistance to be futile. It turns out Facebook is a good way to reconnect with people you used to really like a lot.

It's also a fanTAStic way to spend several hours a night doing things like uploading every photo in which you look even remotely cool, obsessively pinning every city and town you’ve visited the world over, taking quizzes like “Who Were You In A Past Life?”, reviewing books, and looking for people you barely remember from high school while telling yourself, “Okay, five more minutes, and then that’s it.”

The first morning after I joined, I received an email from my principal about the five Charlotte-Mecklenberg schoolteachers who got canned for posting inappropriate photos and comments on Facebook. You’d think I’d have taken that as a cosmic sign and immediately removed myself from the site. But no. Just seven hours in, Facebook was already (inexplicably) too important to me.

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However, since the one new thing I failed to sign up for was bad-mouthing my students while posing for pictures as I guzzle shots dancing topless and canoodling a posse of frat boys, Facebook shouldn’t ruin my career.

(Finally! It’s become an advantage to not be a 20-something looking to hook up.)