I Need a Second Firstlife

The other day, in a moment of frustration about the increasing amount of time it's taking to maintain my "secondlife," I twittered (I refuse to say "tweeted"): "I need a second first life to keep up with my second life." If anyone actually followed me on Twitter I'm sure I would have gotten a lot of emphatic "I know!"s. (what's the grammar on adding an s onto a word in quotes?)

I can't possibly be the only one who's starting to feel the walls closing in on my real life as every day the amount of time it takes me to keep up in cyberspace increases.

I blogged about this a week or so ago then found this awesome video that illustrates it better than my post did, and with each passing day it seems like this stuff is dominating my life more and more.

For instance, I was invited to be a beta tester of Twine, a new “semantic web” application. WTF is semantic web? Even after playing with Twine for a few weeks now I still have only the slightest clue. As far as I can tell it’s the next step in social media further extending its tentacles into people’s everyday lives.

The thing is, you can’t really afford to just decide to turn off the computer and walk away forever. I mean, yes you could swear off keeping up with cyber friends and abandon your Facebook pages and blog and stop checking your personal email. But as far as work goes, forget it if you want to stay competitive in the job market—regardless of your field.

Obviously for me tossing my computer in the trash isn’t an option—part of my job as a web content developer is staying abreast of current trends, tools and industry standards. Ditto for writing—now that there are more and more blogging for pay opportunities out there, experience with all things social media is the coin of the realm and the more you have, the more you’re worth.