{"id":315,"date":"2008-08-13T15:05:49","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T19:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/?p=315"},"modified":"2008-08-13T15:05:49","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T19:05:49","slug":"instant-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/2008\/instant-message\/","title":{"rendered":"Instant. Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry for the delay.\u00a0 There&#8217;s been a lot going on!<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_316\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/hand.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-316\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-316\" style=\"margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 5px;\" title=\"ta da!\" src=\"http:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/hand-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"ta da! here's washwords\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-316\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">ta da! here&#39;s washwords<\/p><\/div>\n<p>BTW: stop yer complainin. You just saw washwords (till I take it down. the interweb is a scary place.)<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of the interweb&#8230;it IS a crazy place, and mostly not in a scary, but just in a fascinating way.\u00a0 And nowhere did I see this more than in sharing my very good news.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">In 1997, <\/span>if you became engaged, you called people you wanted to know. Those people usually asked who they should\/could tell and the word spread to exactly those people. I think I did send a few emails to the friends of friends. My email address was v01269b3x7@.\u00a0 I&#8217;d heard of cell phones. Old people and wealthy people had them in their cars. Sometimes.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #993300;\">In 2008, <\/span>when you tell the world you&#8217;re engaged, you TELL THE WORLD. At once.\u00a0 Meaning my long-lost elementary school playmates found out about the same time as my bestest DC bud&#8217;s hubby, my former <!--more-->coop pal,\u00a0 former colleagues from a few different cities,\u00a0 guys I&#8217;d gone on a few dates with years ago, and my new BFFs since the George Michael concert a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n<p>All found out online from my &#8220;status&#8221; line in facebook and instant messenger. The people who aren&#8217;t <span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;\">tethered to their\u00a0 computers day and night<\/span> wired?\u00a0 Well they didn&#8217;t hear the news till the next day, OR TWO DAYS LATER!!!!, which in my manic, internet-fueled world seems like FOREVER. In my world, email is practically snail mail. Snail mail might as well be pony express.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, granted this was me &#8211; I couldn&#8217;t contain my glee. So maybe I did things like put the word on my facebook page and on my instant message status. and Twitter and\u00a0 umm this blog. But still&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In the high-tech proposal world, my mom (in Cape Cod for vacation) could see the ring only minutes after my sister (literally down the street from my fiance&#8217;) did, my former neighbor in LA saw it before my current neighbor. I did hold off (or try to) long as I could on the blog, because we had barely told our relatives yet.<\/p>\n<p>And rings aren&#8217;t the only news spreading differently nowadays.<\/p>\n<p>I learned of the death of Tim Russert from a buildingmate&#8217;s IM status.<\/p>\n<p>I learned my same former-neighbor-friend who was one of the first to hear of my engagement in LA was okay after the earthquake by asking her on IM literally a minute after hearing.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve found former college pals and writing colleagues, seconds after they join Linked In or other professional writing groups &#8211; my feed reader tells me, not to mention when new posts, important tools, things I NEED to be reading are out there.<\/p>\n<p>I met bloggy friends, writing and thinking about the same thing I am by seeking for that word in twitter and I&#8217;ve had folks find me by posting in online forums and seeing my name there asking a similar question before.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a modern world, a crazy one, a wired one. And I love it.<\/p>\n<p>Being IN love doesn&#8217;t hurt either and I am so very much that. Now&#8230; how many characters does it take to describe bliss?\u00a0 Answer: zero. It&#8217;s already there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry for the delay.\u00a0 There&#8217;s been a lot going on! BTW: stop yer complainin. You just saw washwords (till I take it down. the interweb is a scary place.) And speaking of the interweb&#8230;it IS a crazy place, and mostly not in a scary, but just in a fascinating way.\u00a0 And nowhere did I see [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[622],"tags":[847,841,845,846,50,539,844,40,842,848,843,46],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-bliss","tag-engagement","tag-good-news","tag-happiness","tag-love","tag-social-media","tag-spreading","tag-technology","tag-viral-media","tag-where-ive-been","tag-word","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washwords.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}