When I started out as a blogger I was a little hesitant to really dig into the idea of a glorified online diary. What’s the point of sharing these posts with people may or may not even know? Who cares? After giving it a go primarily as a method of communicating my goings-on with those I left behind when living in Orlando, I found myself thinking like a blogger. If I did something cool or came across something interesting I instantly started thinking “oh I need to get this up on my blog!” and started thinking what I wanted to say before I even got to my computer. My life soon became a string of events that where justified solely by an online presence. If I did something, I did it to blog about it later.
Simply put, Twitter is killing my blog.
How could I go from positing 5-6 times a week about anything and everything, to barely getting 5 posts off in a month? Its not the fact that I am back home again, because my 2nd blog took off right where the Orlando one left off and boasted just as many posts as its predecessor. Honestly the downfall of my blogging fervor is that little blue birdy that everyone is talking about: Twitter.
The ability to shoot of a rapid posting from my phone at any point, is much more appealing than sitting down at the keyboard and hammering something out at the end of an evening. Twitter is so much faster, better streamlined and much simpler than a fully fledged blog. It’s Facebook and Blogspot’s illegitimate lovechild. All the benefits of both, with none of the drawbacks. Social networking has never been easier and neither has blogging. I still like posting more than 140 characters once in a while, particularly movie reviews. But Twitter has undeniably put a dent in my (and many others) blogging by appealing to short attention spans, hunger for updates and the need for social networking.
Last week Sarah and I where in Orlando paying the sunshine state a visit. Bruce was kind enough to let us stay in his pool house for the few days we where there which was great. It was nice to see everyone back at the office and to see that I hadn’t been forgotten. We caught the tail end of the space shuttle launch from the top of a multistory parking deck. Its one of the last few shuttle launches out of cocoa so it was a pretty big deal and had people coming from out of state to watch it blast off. Being a light launch you can see if for hundreds of miles as it lights up the night sky. We spent some time chilling down in Kissimmee with Sarah and Neil as well as grabbing some food at Elephant Bar with Tony, Amanda and Fabbio. All in all I got to see a lot of my Florida people while in Orlando and had a really nice time.
After Orlando we headed down to Tampa for Sarah’s bio availability conference which she was working for HGL. She spent long days down at the conference center manning her booth and playing ‘booth babe’ for the crowds, leaving me to my own devices for the majority of the trip. I have to say, Tampa is rather dull for a major city, and surprisingly quiet. I was expecting to blown away with things to do in the area, but found that everything was largely closed on weekends and only commuting office workers pay the area any attention. There where some great little venues, bars and restaurants along the channel, but everything was deserted which was rather disappointing.
We did catch a Tampa Bay lightning match though which was pretty cool. Even cooler was the fact that I got cheap nosebleeds for eight bucks at a special fan rate because I was at the box office early after walking Sarah to the conference hall. Then when we where inside getting our grub on before face-off a stadium employee came over and traded us our tickets for seats six rows from the glass. Nothing quite like getting $200 seats at nosebleed prices! Our last day in town we drove out to St. Pete and visited the Salvador Dali museum, which I had long wanted to check out after hearing about it in Orlando. The museum itself was rather drab considering the subject matter they had on display, but getting to see so many of Dali’s original works was very cool. I was heartbroken to find that they didn’t have ‘Les Elephants’ though, which is my favorite Dali piece. It was really nice to get to spend some time with Sarah though and we had a great time overall.
What is this? And who am I? Not that either of those questions where on your mind, but here are the answers anyway: This is a blog, and I am Jamie. Two years back I moved to Orlando (proof) and now I am back here in northern Virginia slash DC metropolitan area. During my absence I got up to a fair bit and found blogging to be a great way to keep people who missed me in the know. Now that I’m back I plan on continuing the tradition for those I left behind in Florida, as well as the fact that I seem to really enjoy the habit of posting about my daily goings-on. There is no real rhyme nor reason as to what merits a post, but I’m pretty consistent at keeping my life on display in small (poorly spelled) entries. You’ll probably see I like to review a lot of things, particularly movies and pass judgment when I really have no authority to do so. Don’t let it bother you, and if it does, chime in and comment on my ramblings. I’m always open to suggestions and love to hear from people either they like the blog or not. So that’s that really. I’ve been back almost two weeks now and have a fair bit to catch up on so best get to it. Thanks for stopping to see what’s here. I hope you’ll do so again in the future.
Sincerely,
-Jamie
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