This week I saw Maroon 5, Train and Gavin DeGraw in concert. It was an awesome show, especially because we had great seats (I was surprised, I must have read that online seating chart upside down). Being close to the stage, I could feel the music working its way up through my feet, plugging me into all that energy. Plus I love watching people do what they love to do, to see them in the middle of what they created.

It feels like a real connection.

  I could see the sheen on Adam Levine

But one of Train’s lyrics kept tapping at me, “reminds me that there’s room to grow,” and I started thinking . . . about connections and Twitter and this blog and Facebook, um and writing and growth and fear and then Eleanor Roosevelt’s quotes on courage like this one: you must do the things you think you cannot do.

*deep breath*

Okay so maybe that wasn’t exactly what Train imagined when they wrote that line (although Twitter was mentioned plenty up on the stage), but social media can be a little scary. When I started on Twitter, it was one small tweet for Twitter, but one giant leap for me.

Mostly because it was a change.

Is there anyone out there, ’cause it’s getting harder and harder to breathe

 

It’s funny how easy it is to resist change, because give me a movie, magazine or talk show with a makeover to see and I am all over that. Then again I once resisted getting a cell phone, because I thought my handy dandy pager was oh so much better (yes I said pager). I was just used to it.

It was easier, or so i thought.

Now I’m not saying my cellphone led me to a feeling of Zen, peace and serenity, (although there might be an app for that), but it was one of those “leap” things.
Every time I tweet, blog, leave a comment on someone’s site, or a lurker’s comment on my husband’s Facebook (I’m still not on it–I know, 750 million people can’t be wrong, but baby steps people), I wonder:

Am I doing this right?

I don’t know. Maybe.

The thing is the Internet always comes across to me as so virtual, but it is real life, real people. So if that’s true, then how do I be me in this virtual but not virtual place?

I don’t want to be anything other than me 

Because being online is different than say meeting someone at school or a party or work, or even what you get from being at a live concert, but whether you’re out in public or on the couch in your pajamas, it seems like we are all still showing up for the same reason:

Connection.

And that can be one of those important things that reminds us “there’s room to grow,” because we get to discover people living out their goals and dreams and vacations and children and books and music, and hopefully find a little inspiration for our own lives.

Then, what do you know, along comes change.