Hello All!
I am sorry that it has been so long since my last entry. I feel like the absentee parent that only shows up when they need money for booze or smokes. I only blog when I need to vent, or when I have the driving force to share what I perceive to be pertinent information.
In Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain wrote, “We write frankly and fearlessly but then we “modify” before we print.”
My first snow!
I fear that I am guilty of this. There are many things that I have put on paper and then, when revisited, I censored myself. Whether it was for self-preservation or simply cowardice, there are simply things that I should not put out there for people to read.
This is a very valuable lesson that I have had to learn. There are so many outlets in which to embarrass one’s self nowadays. Between Facebook, Twitter, blogging and any other manner of social networking, one must be very careful about what they write.
View from Mount Hamilton, Washington.
I never really used to think about who was reading my status updates on Facebook until a “friend” brought a story up that I had linked to in conversation. I just had said what I had to say. It never crossed my mind just who had access to my thoughts and actions.
There are constantly stories in the news about the residual effects of social networking. Just this week, in the wake of the massive release of confidential documents by Wikileaks, the job placement office at Columbia University warned students to not access the leaked cables. According to an article by the Guardian UK, students at the Ivy League school were warned by the Office of Career Services that if they discussed the Wikileaks cables on their Facebook and Twitter accounts, or accessed the leaked cables, it would severely hurt their chances for employment with the government or State Department upon graduation.
It had been previously reported that the State Department had issued the statement, which was later retracted.
There have been many other examples of warnings such as this, of varying degrees. A good friend of mine was fired from a summer camp counselor position when photos on someone’s MySpace page surfaced of a group of counselors drinking in their uniforms.
It was wrong for my friend to drink in uniform. The pictures shouldn’t have gone up on the internet. But, it leads to the realization that there are limits to privacy and you can’t put anything out there that you cannot defend or take responsibility for.
So, be careful what goes online because you never know who’s watching.
