Communicating: Millennial Style

Communication is an amazing thing, and it has come so far just in the past decade. Ten years ago, I was about to start my freshman year of college, and my two main forms of communication were telephone and AOL instant messenger! Throughout college, AIM was a mainstay, and the primary way I communicated with friends (and, let's be honest, expressed my teenage emotions through away messages with wit and resonance #sarcasmfont). The ever-loving hashtag had not yet been invented (aside from use as an abbreviation of the word number! - side tangent real fast: anyone see the James Franco debacle last week where he hit on the 17 year old, and he said "send me your #", and she said "what do you mean #"? Palm to face because she apparently didn't know that # has a purpose aside from its use in social media). Fast-forward ten years, and, while still a consummate communicator by nature, the means of communication are vastly different, and always evolving. I am constantly amazed at this world of social media that we live in, generally in very positive ways. While there are the segments of the population who really, really over-share their lives on social media, the bright spots, for me, outweigh those every single day.

Photo courtesy of Cartoon Stock

As a girl who has moved around quite a bit since graduating from college, the various forms of social media are a nice way to "keep in touch" with people in my life from all over. Of course, I use "keep in touch" very loosely because social media really only lets me be privy to those moments they choose to share with the world, not just me, but it is really nice. For instance, my friend Taylor just went on a trip to Vegas with her hubby. I didn't know about the trip in advance, but it was nice to see all of the fun they had (and see their cute faces!). Through blogging, I have strengthened a relationship with my college friend Joey. She is a fellow blogger and stay-at-home-wife / writer (she is currently working on her first book!). Then, I have also had the pleasure of connecting with folks I never would have known otherwise, be it on Instagram, or Twitter, or through blogging (hey Eric & Kelsey, Lona, Janelle, Myra, Amber, and many others I know I am forgetting!). Then there are plenty of other bloggers who I don't know at all, and who don't know me, but who are bravely putting their lives out there for the world! And I love it!

As I told my mother-in-law last week, yet another reason I am incredibly grateful for this new career opportunity is that I feel more connected to the people in my life. Not just to Harris, who I am getting to spend so much more time with!, but also to the rest of our families and my friends. My best friend Erica is currently pregnant with her first little baby, and I am so incredibly grateful that I am getting to chat with her on a daily basis as she experiences this new adventure. I feel closer to her than I have in years because, even though it is over email, we are talking every. single. day! About anything and nothing, and it is just so nice! I knew there were a lot of things I was missing when I was the Globe-Trotting Queen, but I never realized how much I was just missing my relationships and connections with people. Maybe because I just didn't have time to think about the fact that I was missing it.

The world continues to get smaller, no matter how far we spread across it, and I think it is meaningful that some of the best inventions of the past decade have been those that help us stay in touch with our loved ones even better. While there are many things that cause me to question humanity at times, that simple fact says that, as independent as we might think we are, we all want to be connected.