Oh Golly

Oh Golly,

It appears that I have forgotten about this blog. That would be twice now. No three. I have made three blogs with full intention to become more interactive in the blogosphere and social networking scene. But again, life distracted me. I hope I'm not the only author who knows that they need to to get on the couch and glue themselves to Facebook, Goodreads, FictionPress, and Blogger. By the way, I have accounts for all of these. I just haven't gotten around to dedicating myself to social networking.

But I'm only in highscool, so I shouldn't have to be too concerned with this right? Or maybe it's because I'm in high school that I should already have this social networking thing in the bag. It seems that I was much better at this when I was in 7th and 8th grade. All I did was network back then. But then high school happened.

I'm involved in the National FFA Orginization which for those of you who don't know, or however few of you that have glanced at my two posts who don't know, the National FFA Orginization is America's largest youth orginization with over 500,000 members nationwide with over twice as many alumni. The FFA hosts multiple contests with the intent to nurture specific agriculture related and general business skills. I have competed in contests such as Horticulture -the toughest competiton I think because you have to memorize so many plants!- and Ag Sales in which every team is given the same product to market and pitch to a panel of judges who act the part of customers. Then there is Ag Communications in which a team of three are assigned to the parts of Social Media Specialist (Ironically, I was this person), Journalist and Media Designer (As in design a website or magazine). This year, we won State in Ag Comm so my teammates and I are going to Nationals in the fall.

My personal favorites, though, have been Ag Issues and Prepared Public Speaking. Ag Issues -which my chapter has won State in as well- consists of a team of 3 to 7 members who pick an agriculture related topic to hold a 15 minute, scripted Power Point debate on. My freshman year, I was on the team and we won State and competed at Nationals. We won Silver medals with our topic of Local Food vs Mass Produced Food. Prepared Public Speaking is pretty self explanitory. You write a 6 to 8 minute speech on an agriculture related topic with a problem-solution format.

Through the FFA I've become a social butterfly with all the networking conferences and competitons where you wait in the holding room for possibly hours. I just haven't become an online social butterfly.

But given the necessity these days for an author to have some kind of online presence, I'm going to set my iPhone with alerts to tell me I need to blog. That should work. As long as I bring my laptop with me to State FFA Convention this week and the Washington Leadership Conference at the end of the month.

Through everything within the last few years, I've realize that I am very much a people person. I love meeting new people and learning about what life is like in other parts of the state or the country. It's just that I prefer in-person inteaction. I like to have a converstion with someone in which they can clearly read my body languuage and facial expressions and hear the inflections of my voice so they understand the underlying emotions within my words. With the internet you have to chose your words very carefully because the other people don't have those conversational cues.

Does anyone else have this problem of being so much of a person who prefers face to face interaction that online interaction seems daunting and impersonal?