is it a bad thing to ask people that I know to like something that has nothing, really at all, to do with them?
It feels odd to me to ask people to “like” a page that they may not like (to be specific, a page dedicated to my greeting cards, or mayhaps my rambling blog posts … like this one).
Gone are the days of simply calling someone on the phone, a phone that has a rotary dial and no inkling of caller ID (am showing my age even as I look through my collection of eight track tapes and vinyl albums) to say, “hey … i have this thing going on and I would really appreciate it if you would call, rotary style, your friends, and let them know”.
The ability to reach hundreds, thousands or, even in the most wonderful of scenarios, hundreds of thousands of people, with a single link is nearly mind-boggling.
I am from another time. A time when I stretched the phone cord (attached to the wall) as far as it would go to talk to a boyfriend that I wonder now if I even ever liked.
It didn’t matter how far I stretched the cord, however, as my sister was nearly always listening on the other line and was all too eager to tattle about anything I was saying.
Those of you who have younger sisters will understand this with chilling clarity.
The hair on the back of your neck will likely stand up.
I don’t begrudge my younger sister nor harbor any ill feelings about her, but at the end of the day, it would have been nice had she minded her own business.
But, as younger sisters often do, she did not and, if truth be told, still does not. She may deny this but as my dad is fond of saying, “the truth will stand when the world’s on fire”.
But then I digress about the obstacles that younger sisters (or brothers, as the case may be) entail.
As it is, this isn’t a post about old boyfriends, dead husbands or otherwise estranged friendships.
It is about whether or not it is acceptable ask people you know, friends or otherwise, to follow along on whatever endeavor that may be taking form at the time.
I am a photographer and writer and, because it is necessary in order to support such things, a nurse.
A paycheck, these days, comes in handy.
A job is a job and while I find myself becoming more involved with people than I feel comfortable with, caring about them, wondering about them, worrying about them, I try to distance myself.
It isn’t as easy as it should be for I find myself thinking of them as my parents, or daughter, or sister or friends and then I get all mixed up in their lives and wonder how they are doing and if they are eating and if they have air-conditioning on days when the thermometer reads 95 degrees in the shade.
I think sometimes that I am selfish and then realize that I want to be selfish, but can’t quite attain that status.
I guess, on some level, that is a good thing, that unselfishness, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to be selfish.
I’m just not any good at it.
S0, with unselfishness that belies itself, I besiege my friends and family to promote my blog and greeting cards while harboring a sense of guilt for asking in the first place.
I am certain that somewhere, in all of this, an oxymoron is simply waiting to be born.
I am not going to apologize for being myself, but will, rest assured, feel guilty for not doing so.
Until next time, be well.
God will, without fail, have the last word.
A Photographer's Heart 