Happy Holidays All!  This is my first post in quite some time.  People ask me about work life balance all the time and between a full time job, two small children, wanting to occasionally exercise and the fact that I’m deep into re-writing my YA novel, Assimilation, I’m afraid this blog has suffered!  So please bear with me.  I’m targeting completion of my re-write for January and hopefully will get back to some more consistent blogging and sharing then.  That said, I got an interesting email this morning from an e-discovery company that seemed rather timely for the holidays and suitably sinister for this blog!

According to this report in the UK, text and email holiday greetings are starting to replace paper greetings with the 18-24 year old set.   On the subject of texts, Jodan Graham,  just a little over a week after the wedding, is on trial.  The prosecutors plan to show premeditation by introducing into evidence text messages sent right before the fall.  The  messages include one that says that “she was completely second guessing everything.”  The defense said that this was just a horrible accident.  That ”Arguing on this small ledge [is] like arguing in a phone booth,” and that “Jordan lied because she was afraid no one would ever let her explain what happened on that ledge.”

On the subject of texting, getting you into trouble, Roxanne Jones thinks that it can keep you out of trouble too.  She suggests that boys get texts acknowledging consent lest a boy meet a “stupid girl.”   Now, I think that this idea might not be so practical and I’m not sure that calling girls “stupid” really effectively gets the point across.  Nor do I think a text of consent solves other problems, like taking advantage of someone when they’re drunk, etc., etc., but she is making an attempt to come up with a solution for a real problem, so while I have to bite my tongue on some of her ideas here, I can’t fault her for wanting to make sure her son doesn’t get into trouble for something he shouldn’t be in trouble for.  (Personally, I prefer the focus on respect – for self, for women- than on covering ones tracks, but until I have a better idea, I won’t throw stones).

I think the moral of the story here is that Social Media is forever, or at least close to it, and that can include texting (deleting those texts don’t mean they’re gone forever either!).  And it’s not just use in the courtroom that we have to think about.  I’ve been poking around sites like Vine lately, mostly because I’m writing a YA novel and I want to make sure that I’m staying on top of popular culture.  Mostly, it’s awesome and creative and funny.  But all those teenagers out there posting videos and sending texts where they’re naked or high or smoking something illegal — I don’t judge, but it makes me want to weep.  Because you can’t take it back. And it’s hard in the moment to think about how you might be interviewing for a job ten years later and someone will hold something that you did in a moment in time when you weren’t thinking clearly against you.  Or that some bully or angry ex could get a hold of it and use it to humiliate you.  Recently on Facebook, someone put up one of those e-cardy things (that’s the official name for them).  It said, “The Best Part of Being Over 40 Is That We Did Most of Our Stupid Stuff Before Social Media.”  Amen to that.  We’ve all been stupid, our stupidity just want’s quite so enduring.

Anyhow, back to editing my novel – something I hope WILL endure.  And hoping to get some more posts up soon, including the ever popular one word book reviews.  Let see if I end 2013 with more reviews than I ended 2012!

Happy Holidays to all!

Sarena