An Epiphany

I figured I’d start this blog with its raison d’être.

I wanted to have a serious, grown-up blog. I’ve been mulling over what this elusive topic should be for about a year. When my wife started her blog on the profession of being an artist (shameless plug for The Living Artist ) I found myself even more driven to find the right topic. I wanted something with some depth and content on a topic that I actually had some knowledge on and at the same time was a topic that I thought people might actually find interesting.

This promptly eliminated everything from drama to computer programming to strange sexual fetishes.

To explain how the topic of this blog came about requires a convoluted story that began with a 22 year-old 8th grader. We’ll refer to her as J. I knew J at two stages in her life. First, as an eighth grader when I was a junior in high school. My HS went from 8th to 12th. I got to know her slightly better my senior year when she was in 9th. The next time I met J was in an organisation called the SCA. This is a mediaeval, historic re-creation group. J went camping with me and introduced me to a drink called the pineapple bomb (Note link goes to inaccurate recipe to our version). Since then it’d been about 15 years since I last spoke with J.

I came back into contact with J about a few months ago on ‘current internet fad’ Facebook. Through FB I have found several people from my pre-college days. And as my 25th high school reunion is marginally closer than my 20th; pre-college isn’t recent. FB also has a nice web internet messaging client. I wouldn’t choose the interface for my primary IM client; but it does let me chat with people using facebook concurrently. Which I did with J (for the first time in 15-ish years) today.

The conversation went well with only a modicum of reminiscing. There were two points of the conversation that were specifically of note to me. We both are crazy about tea and hate coffee. (Which led to a discussion about being a coffee hater living in Seattle). The other was a note on her FB profile. (I digress)

When I’m chatting online with someone I haven’t spoken to in a while (or ever before), I will often peruse their online profile. I do this to try to gauge the person; figure out what topics are appropriate or not; and most importantly, see if there are any topics worth bringing up. In the case of J, one struck my eye.

I am a regular watcher of the show Eureka. The first half of the third season ended in late September of 2008. There’s been no news on the “Back 13″ since then. Even the writers blog “Eureka Unscripted” dried up within a week or so of the series. At this point I figured I could look again for some press release to see if anything had been announced or if the series had been cancelled. It was a topic I could discuss with J.

My google-fu was not in great shape. Searches turned up nothing of value. I went to see if the writer’s blog had been updated. Sadly, it was still lying in quiet slumber since its final post of Oct 2, 2008 wishing Exec Producer and ShowRunner Charlie Craig a good birthday. I wrote an email to the address on the site seeing if some random fan of the show could get any inkling if the show still lived. I don’t expect a response. But at least there was an email address under the names of the blog contributors. Some of which had twitter ids.

Ah, Twitter. The online curiosity which has become an addiction for many and a curse for several of those surrounding the many. I’ve recently been bitten by the twitter bug. But, I try to use it as a tool for ‘micro-blogging’. I’m also pleased that I’ve found tools that drive my twitter posts (I HATE THE WORD TWEET) to both my facebook as well as a daily collated post to my LiveJournal. Needless to say, I hunted up this writers twitter account.

Many celebrities have been bitten by twitter. It’s extraordinary how much people will reveal on twitter that you won’t find anywhere else. Well, I paged back a few pages through this writer’s public twitter and found my gold mine:

In the middle of the 317 story. It’s going to be good. If it doesn’t kill us.
317 outline done and in. Notes call on Monday… so the weekend is free! There’s a first!

Episode 17 of season 3. The show is still in production.

J and I took the news as encouraging and had a great chat about the first half of the season. I was pleased with my ability to go through about 4 different layers of social networking to help an old friend answer a question that I had to. The question was trite and not really very earth shaking; but it was a small social bond we shared and it was good to connect on it.

If you watch the show “House” you will know what I mean when I say it was at this point while Wilson was talking that I just stared off into space with that growing expression of, “Oh… well that should have been obvious.”

I knew that a blog devoted to all aspects of social networking was something that I could write about. I’ve already generated content categories for History, Sociology, Technical, and Promotion. I also have a meta category for posts about the blog, myself, and other things I think I can add.

Amusingly, when you consider all that Social Networking contains and touches; I may very well have a topic that will reasonably let me post on topics as far ranging as everything from drama to computer programming to strange sexual fetishes.

It always comes full circle.

Next up… a little background on me and why I feel qualified to write on this topic. But as for now; it’s 1:12 in the morning and I’d actually like to get some sleep.

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