I've always been a latecomer to technology, the opposite of what they call an "early adopter", skeptical of what is promised, sure that I have everything I need, afraid of becoming dependent on it, a luddite in many ways. I didn't get a cell phone until 2006, after my sophomore year of college, didn't embrace text messaging until 2009 when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama and found it a much more efficient use of pay-as-you-go cell phone minutes than trying to call people in poor coverage zones. I didn't get a smart phone until 2016, a full three years after my partner had one (to be fair, I took full advantage of her access to maps and bus schedules and the internet when the occasion arose).
I am notoriously bad at predicting which technological innovations will stick. In 2012 I had just moved back to the Boston area and was looking for work, supplemented by odd gigs and participating in the occasional paid research study. I found an ad on Craigslist for a User Experience study looking for "Women Users of Pinterest." Unsure what this "Pinterest" was and whether or not I could quickly become a woman user of it for the purpose of participating in the study, I looked it up. It seemed pointless, basically just a fancy way of organizing your bookmarks. Not for me, I thought. Probably won't last. A year or two later, when I was working as an art teacher I finally made a Pinterest account and in fact found it very useful for organizing my links.
Around the time I was coming around to Pinterest I found out one of my coworkers had the strangest part time job- he packaged small portions of ingredients into recipe kits that people ordered off the internet and got sent to their homes where they then turned them into dinner! People would pay for that? I was incredulous.
So I find it funny but not surprising that now, in 2020 I am starting a blog, after all the years I resisted. The two years I was in Panama I wrote emails home to friends and family, insisting that I did not want them to be in a permanent home on the internet. And here I am now, making a home on the internet for my thoughts. Do people even read blogs anymore? All the blogs I used to enjoy reading seem to have morphed into mini-blog Instagram posts, or just gone dormant. Technology changes. People's lives change. Nothing is forever. But I often still stumble across interesting corners of the internet and get a glimpse into creative people's minds and process. I'd like to make my little corner into a place I can be proud of, a place where I exercise the muscle of saying what I want to say and practicing how I want to talk about what I do. I'm looking forward to it.
