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I begin with a thought about the future of blogging. This is a thought not so much about my blogs, but everyone's blogs and the quicksilver nature of things here in the peak of the Information Age.

In the last 45 days, I have posted five blogs. I used to post two or three blogs a week, sometimes daily (especially during a national election season.) I have over five hundred posts between this site and my blogs on Dissent Channel. Why has everything slowed down so much? Is it some new facet of my personal life, have I taken on added responsibilities at work? Not really...the problem is Facebook. Facebook has, and will, forever change the way people communicate. In just three short years, it has already become one of the most important inventions of the 21st century--whether or not the company even survives the next decade.

When you can choose who you want to communicate with and what you want to say instantaneously, building your own fan base through your own Facebook (and now Twitter) communities, then everybody has the potential to be a rock star. Andy Warhol famously mused that everyone has 15 minutes of fame. If you thought "reality TV" gave everybody that 15 minutes, think about the possibilities on Facebook, through Twitter or any number of other social networking sites. The possibilities are endless. (As is the potential for narcissism, reckless self-promotion and pragmatic disinformation, just to name some of the more potentially damaging aspects of this phenomenon.)

I mentioned this concern on--irony alert!--my Facebook page and my friend Lyle encouraged me to keep on bloggin', noting that people with longer attention spans will always appreciate taking the time to read different points of view on blogs and web pages. I think he's right. But it sure is nice sometimes to just put the headline of the day on your Facebook page and let your commenting friends do the rest. I'll have to make sure I don't become a victim of excessive laziness so that I can occasionally express myself over the quarter mile instead of settling for the short sprint of Facebook or Twitter.

Fun Fact About the Recession #1

According to MSNBC.com and This American Life, shark attacks are at a five year low because fewer people than ever are vacationing in shark prone areas.

This just in: sharks are now swimming to Washington to lobby for a bailout.

The Wine of the Week

A new feature on The R Spot where I recommend a good bottle of wine every now and then on a budget. This week, I'm enjoying the Barefoot Shiraz 2008, available here for only $7.99. Smooth, with a "plummy", good body and a good flavor, if you enjoy a good table wine but don't want to spend an arm and a leg for a bottle, I think the Barefoot brand is pretty decent and the Shiraz is the best one from them that I've had so far.

What if You Get Fired in the Depths of a Recession?

Did you ever have one of those weeks at work where it seems like nothing goes quite right? That has been the last week or so for me. First, I make a typo and one of our station's winds up running the wrong episode of JUDGE JUDY (begging the question, how does one really tell the difference?) Then, you're alerted to $1300 worth of mistakes made a couple of months ago in inputting the wrong information for some movie spots. If this doesn't happen in the same week, maybe it's not a big deal, because we are all human (except for those of us that might be Cylons) and sometimes we make mistakes. Especially when the company we work for keeps laying us off and furloughing us and forcing us to work short staffed and at a reduction of wage. But this is not an excuse...you still have to do the work and you still have to do it well. And when information like this comes out in the same week...it's hard not to start second-guessing yourself.

Then, in the wee hours of the night sometimes, you wake up and you find yourself wondering about the worst case scenario--what if I make a mistake that costs me my job? What if I have to find a new job, having been fired from the old one in a time when the unemployment rate is 8% and rising and every company seems to shed employees every week instead of hiring them? What happens when you're approaching middle age, have but one degree, haven't had any new training and you have bills to pay and a mortgage to worry about? What if you're not a star but an asteroid and now you're burned out, used up and crashing into the Earth's atmosphere faster than a falling 401k?

Then you think, nah, what am I worried about? A bad week is a bad week. Everybody has them, right? Why be paranoid? Don't let the mistakes of the past throw you off your game. Focus on what you have to do, do it and stop worrying. Things will work out okay, right?

Right?

Peace...