How I Learned to Use Social Media and Stay [Somewhat] Sane

Call Dr. Phil...the Goddess is in a confessin' mood. You can learn from another's pain [see: Clinton/Lewinsky], so pull up a chair.

We all know that maintenance of an online social persona takes a nice hunk of time. From stolen quick-checks during work hours to entire Sunday afternoons, we give up other pursuits, or pretend that we are multi-tasking, in order to be online.

The first commitment of precious clock ticks is mandatory and basically self-managed: the small task of teaching oneself the ins and outs of a program. This assignment cannot be completed until one has conquered the visceral fear of clicking on the "wrong" button. [tick-tock] Attract some friends or followers and start having some fun. Soon you'll know what it is to be "lost" in cyberspace. [tick-tock-tick-tock]

What next? Why, "Rinse and repeat" as Rachael Maddow says.

Apply that process to the next app you want to use, and then the one after that. Twitter. Facebook. Flickr. Digg. Delicious. The list goes on. Unfortunately for time management, even if all you want is a trial run, it'll still require an investment of several hours.

(That's not necessarily a bad thing; the Goddess is still cheerleading for social media. But when you fall asleep at work because you couldn't stop watching the comments on #Haiti after midnight, don't say you weren't warned.

If there were never again to be a new Internet website to be learned and experienced and pronounced the newest/hottest/bestest ever, well, even in that perfect scenario, the hamster is already on the wheel. In other words, it takes a lot of time just to run fast enough to stay in the same place, AKA a vibrant online presence.

But -- and this is the part nobody tells you -- the programs don't stay the same. They have the audacity to change.

Take Facebook. Believe me, there are people who know FB like Zuckerberg's clone, and they were not happy to find yet another privacy option or resized photo albums. Updated apps make the hamster run faster, and then he approaches cardiac overload.

Nevertheless, bring the little rodent into the real world. He'll stroke out on a dozen new cool websites and programs every single day.

Yes, the Goddess has compared herself to a sweaty, fixated rodent with his little beady eyes on a prize. You'd understand if you'd seen me trying to figure out Twitter months ago, or Evernote or Creative Commons now. Besides, the pic shown here is of a USB toy that plugs into your computer. The faster you type, the faster the hamster runs. Hilarious.

A perpetual chase of mastery over the twinkly, shiny, ever-morphing Internet is stupid. I admit here and now that I am but a mere fruit fly in the galactical scope of the Net. If I pretended to be anything more, I would surely go crazy.

And just in case I don't know my place, the Net will smack me down. Here's a tweet I saw today from a very tech saavy woman in Kentucky:

"Busting out the palm pre plus to use as a mifi. So cool!"

What the hell is a mifi? I sent a tweet to ask her but got no immediate response. So I went to Google. Nothing. Netlingo -- no luck. I actually let several hours go by and then tried a 4th time. Bingo. mifi = mobile broadband for multiple computers.

So do I feel better now that I know? Actually, I do.