Friends - On Purpose

I have a Facebook account ; it is fun to keep track of ‘friends’ and what they are up to. You add Friends that you want to be connected to or stay in contact with. In face it was a friend from New Mexico that convinced me to sign up for Facebook. It is an easy way for us to connect on a daily basis if we choose. In some aspects I think social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are also bad for relationships, if we don’t watch out our friendships will become casual.

Starting this weekend I will be attending church at our new 2nd campus and that means that I won’t be able to have our normal brief chat and hug each Sunday with some of my closest friends. I remember the night I told one of my friends that we wouldn’t be together on Sundays and she got mad at me. She felt as if I was abandoning her. My response to her was that it only meant that we had to be more intentional in our friendship and not just let it happen on Sundays.

I have some close friends that live in other parts of the country and I have to work at being On Purpose with those relationships because of the distance between us. I have friends that live within a few short miles of my house and it seems that I am don’t spend much more time with them than I do my long distant relationships. I can sometimes take them for granted.

Deliberate, planned, designed, purposed, intended, calculated, prearranged, premeditated. Are these words that describe your friendships or do you like most of us take them for granted? So what is a friend, per good old Webster they are person you know well and regard with affection and trust.

I continue to be On Purpose with my friends even in these busy times.

Prov 27:6; 17:17

Just One of Those Days

Things are busy, not just busy absolutely nuts. Work, home, you name it, my life is just overloaded right now.

At about 2pm today I walked into my boss’s office to discuss some of what is going on and make sure I hadn’t lost my mind. I sat down in a chair; he walked over to the white board to draw it out so we could both get the information straight. I take off my glasses to give my eyes a change of pace. I look down and this is what I saw:

Yep, one black shoe and one brown shoe, and it’s not like they are even the same shoe. The only thing I can say is at least I have them on the right feet.

Tomorrow is a new day and I know that at least for today I have made a few of my Twitter follower’s laugh which isn’t all that bad.

All a Twitter

So you may have noticed a slight change in my blog format, I now have a Twitter window. So what is Twitter? Twitter is social networking or micro-blogging service that allows users to post and receive messages to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group. Here's Twitter's self-description: "A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?" Like cell phones, email, and blackberries, Twitter is a tool that can either add value to your working life or become the perfect interruption machine.

Some of the uses for these micro-blogging sites are keeping up with the presidential candidates, getting media alerts from CNN, The New York Times, and the BBC. I’m sure if we search we would find one for ESPN and FoxSports. Who know soon we might be able to get WADOT updates via twitter.

As I observe the people that are using twitter, I have noticed that there are folks out there that just trying to see how many people they can be linked too. I have a few following me that are following over 30,000 different people. Now talk about obsessive. I see where the Snohomish paper is following me, possibly because of my name but probably just because I listed Monroe in my profile and they want me to subscribe to updates from them via twitter. CNN is in the top 10 of the most followers. Yes there is a site that tracks the top 100. What a distinction check out the Twitterholics .

As for my own experience, I am enjoying it but then again I enjoy communication and I am making new friends along the way. I have downloaded a neat application twhirl on to my desktop that is like an IM window that allows me to track everyone that I follow and easily create post. So checkout it out it just might be fun.