Social Media: Celebrating a Birthday

Today is my birthday. I am a baby boomer and a novice user of social media. It's hard to believe that I have been on this planet this long. I suppose that I am considered to be in the "autumn" of my life. That's easy enough to accept because I don't feel a day over, well, perhaps I'll leave that alone. lol

Seriously, I woke up this morning just like I did yesterday and headed for the coffee pot. It is just another day after all. As I sat at the computer, scanning the various news sources that I visit each morning, I am only slightly aware that today is the one day a year that is officially mine. I can claim this day as my special day, if I choose to. No, I don't think I will. I think I prefer to just treat this day as any other. Maybe I am afraid that if I focus on this being my birthday, I will have to own those decades that have passed so quickly. Maybe my ego is more fragile than I am willing to admit.

Birthdays are becoming more reflective than anticipatory. Isn't that true of most baby boomers? This morning I find myself thinking about my mother and how she was feeling pn this day all those years ago. Pregnant with her first child and coming to term in the heat of the summer must have been horrid. It's been over 100 degrees here this week and I have been miserable without being pregnant. My Mom must have been so uncomfortable. I'm sure that's why she planned her second pregnancy to deliver in early May. My mother is no fool. Today I celebrate her. She's the one that deserves a celebration.

I am so glad that I was born in the 50's. The advances in technology during my lifetime have been amazing. Think about it. Without those advances in technology, I could not sit here and express myself in real-time. I would still be using a manual typewriter (and a bottle of white-out) to record my thoughts. If I wanted to share them, I would have to address an envelope, place postage on it, and wait for it to travel to some obscure publisher via the United States Postal Service. And after all that, they still might not get published.

Now I can email, blog, text message, tweet, Skype or any one of a dozen other different things to get these crazy thoughts out of my head and into the universe. What a world!

No matter how I would like to ignore this milestone today, social media will not let it happen. I was barely on my second cup of coffee when the ding, ding, ding, of incoming mail started. Dozens of friends from Facebook were sending me their best wishes and a few old people jokes too. It's pretty cool actually. Social media has given us a tool that reminds us to acknowledge each other on our birthdays Back in the day, I am certain that I would not have heard from 99% of these people on my birthday. I am not so naïve or self-absorbed to believe otherwise.

Most of us belong to multiple social media sites and spend hours catching up with what I call "social media chatter". We develop cyber-friends that we may never meet face-to-face. We reveal more than we should about ourselves on some of these sites but seem to forget that when dozens of birthday wishes roll in. Aren't we a silly bunch to put so much value in birthday messages from people we hardly know? Sometimes I wonder what the world will look like in another twenty years, after we've all lost our social skills and have forgotten to have a conversation without acronyms like brb, bff, lol, ttyl, and rotflmao. Gee whiz!

Ding, ding, ding. Ding, ding, ding. The messages just keep coming:

• Happy Birthday!
• Wishing you a blessed day!
• You're that Old?
• Sending you love.
• You're older than dirt.
• 29 and holding, huh?

I have the best of friends and family. Let them remind me of my age. It's just a number anyway. I feel great. Other than a few new lines (wrinkles actually) and an occasional gray hair, I don't really look my age. I can still stay up all night and party. Well, once every few months anyway. It takes me that long to recover. My brother reminds me that aging is not for the weak. He's right.

Life is good. I am happy where I am and I am grateful to be a baby boomer. I am happy to have lived in the 5+ decades that have brought such change in the world. As a kid in the 60's and 70's, I dreamed of world peace. It has eluded us. As a young adult in the 80's, I believed in a woman's right to be paid a wage equal to that of a man doing the same job. We're not there yet but we have made some progress. As a more mature adult in the 90's, I dreamed of a cure for cancer, an end to racism, social justice, and more. We have not accomplished any of them. As a middle-aged adult in the 2000s, I dreamed of an end to terrorism, religious conflict, poverty, and hunger. No success there either. We have so much to do and now, in the autumn of my life, I realize how little time there is left for me to contribute to making the world a better place. The well wishes of all my friends and family that keep going ding, ding, ding have more meaning than ever before. I humbly accept each one of them in hopes that they will sustain me for the coming year. There is so much to be done but I won't stop dreaming.

So maybe this isn't just another day after all. Happy Birthday to me!

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