…by using a different social media platform. I’ve been thinking a lot about social media this summer and even got my first paid speaking gig a few weeks back to talk about using social media in the classroom to the faculty of Mass Maritime Academy in September. And the idea I keep coming back to is I’m not getting a good return on the time I invest in Facebook.

This isn’t about Google+. I’ve barely spent any time there although I already see some advantages over Facebook and Twitter (the two social networks I spend the most time on) and LinkedIn (the one social network where I should spend more time). This isn’t really about the oft-sited privacy issues (although, for a person who is pretty much open and occasionally overshares for a living, even I am a bit creeped out by the facial recognition technology, and would kill for an easy way to untag all those photos of me drinking).

I sort of have the same feeling I had when I shut down my MySpace account a few years ago, which was, to quote Steve Langford, along the lines of “Who gives a s–t? Who gives a f–k?” But it’s not quite that either.

For now, I’m staying put and taking the advice of a friend who responded to an initial post I put up about this: moderation. I’m scaling back how much I use Facebook and going to limit myself to no more than one visit per weekday (so if you need to get in touch with me, find a different way).

And I may still decide to cancel my account altogether. Facebook wastes a lot of time for me, and a lot of that wasted time is because Facebook, for my purposes, is inefficient. What it comes down to is different services do all the things I use Facebook for, only better.

Here’s what I primarily use Facebook for (in no particular order):

• Share and store photos
• Status updates (both sharing my own and reading other people’s)
• Self promotion
• Keep in touch with old friends

And here are the services that handle each of the above better:

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He died on a Thursday morning last month, just a few weeks shy of his 39th birthday. He left behind a 36-year-old widow and two children who were old enough to be sad but young enough to not fully understand how different growing up was going to be for them.

I got the call as I sat down to a brown-bagged sandwich in my office and an afternoon of grading student writing. It was one of those sudden deaths – one second he was someone I hadn’t seen in months and the next second he had collapsed on the floor giving all my friends from college a sad reason to come together. No one knew much more than that, my college roommate Frank told me. He’d let me know as soon as he found out about the arrangements.

I shut the door to my office and, after a few minutes of stunned, recollection wrote a post on Facebook:

“I always admired the love and loyalty Dave Nunez had for his friends and family, and his big, booming laugh always made me smile. The world is much quieter and much sadder for me now.”
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On Patriot’s Day in 2006 I went on a second date with someone to the Red Sox game. We’re still “friends” on Facebook, but I haven’t seen much of her since.

In 2007 I met friends I now consider even better friends for drinks after they ran the Boston Marathon. I stopped drinking last year, meaning a lot of my old drinking friends are now just friends.

In 2008, the person I spent most of my life calling my “best” friend came into town to see me finish my own crack at the Boston Marathon. We haven’t spoken since late 2009.

In 2009, I ran the last 10 miles of the marathon with a friend of a friend who has since “un-friended” me on Facebook. I kind of despise the idea of using the word “friend” as a verb.

Last, I blew off meeting real good friends on Patriot’s Day to spend the day with a girlfriend. That day was a mess — much like the entire relationship.

This year on Patriot’s Day, I’m taking off on a road trip to look at a PhD program and heading back that night to meet students working on a final project. And I have to admit I’m more than kind of happy that I’ll be playing it safe by altogether avoiding my friends and “friends.”

Note: Edited to change all references to “President’s Day” from “Patriot’s Day,” as originally written. A student caught my error, for which I have no excuse, other than to say at least I was consistently wrong.

One of the first news stories I ever wrote (click to see a larger JPEG image)….

From Old Photos

Bridgewater State University’s “Social Media Week” begins today, and part of that event is a Blogfest, which I’ll be participating in. Themes we’ll be hitting on during Blogfest:

Here’s today’s entry on Learning, where we were asked to write about “What has been a learning experience that has impacted you the most in your life?”:

I was initially terrified of Archie, and with good reason.

He was the mythic maintenance man at the summer camp where I worked in my late teens and early twenties, and, according to camp legend, more ferocious than Hatchet Harry, the Pigmen and other characters who populated the ghost stories that were passed down from one generation of campers to the next.

Indeed, the first time I saw him – after years of hearing about him – he was upset that someone had broken his stereo and single-handedly throwing a heavy table across the dining hall. When it crashed into the wall it was still six feet off the ground.

There were rumors that, before coming to work at our camp on an island on a lake in New Hampshire, he may or may not have worked for the mob in New York City. Everyone knew he spent all winter on the island, savoring the three weeks in early winter and three weeks in the spring when the ice was too thin to walk over and too thick for a boat to pass, giving him perfect solitude.

Solitude that was, presumably, aimed at making him even more insane.
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Dave Nunez, one of my oldest friends from college and one of the most caring people I have ever known, died unexpectedly on Thursday. He was 38 and leaves a wife and two small children, so you can imagine how awful this is for all who knew him. There is a Facebook memorial group where people are posting memories, but for those of you not on there, here’s what I posted:

I have my own head full of memories about David Nunez. He was the first person I met during my freshman year at UMass in September 1991. While I was scared about all the changes in my life, here was this affable, outgoing guy confidently telling me he was going to be the first Latino president of the United States. Over the years he b…ecame a fixture at our apartment in Amherst, orchestrating a takeover of the admissions building from our telephone (before it was shut off), ordering “second dinner” for us or performing loud, karaoke renditions of “Where Is My Mind.”

But it was long after college that I realized what Dave’s greatest qualities as a friend were. What struck me most about him was that his interest in people was always genuine. There was always warmth and love that I couldn’t even fake on a good day, and he was one of those people who made you feel better about yourself when you were around him.

After we both got grown-up lives of our own, the number of times I would see him dwindled to maybe once or twice a year. Like any good friend, you picked up where you left off but this is where Dave showed that he was always listening, paying attention and caring about what you had to say. As we got caught up Dave would remember personal details about my life and things I had told him long ago with clarity that was even better than my own recollection of details about my own life. It was very subtle but also showed just how selfless he was and how invested in his friends that he was, and I miss those talks already.

I’m heading to New York tomorrow to run the New York City Marathon on Sunday. Training has been fitful and I’m not as confident as I was with my two previous marathons, but I’m going and I’m going to do everything I can to enjoy myself.

Click here for easier to read, .PDF version.

“Have you been running?”

Michelle is my therapist and she’s a good therapist so she knew the answer before she asked the question. I meet with her at least once a week, sometimes more, and I like seeing her. But at that point – just a few days after I had bailed on training for the 2010 Boston Marathon — the sessions had started to feel more confessional than therapeutic, less about getting better and more about verbally documenting my downward spiral to rock bottom.

“No, not really.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“You seem to have plenty of time to go out drinking with Lisa.”

Lisa is the main reason I’m there. A week earlier Michelle had sent me home to Google borderline personality disorder. I did some quick Internet research and read phrases like “unstable mood” and “chaotic relationships” and “impulsiveness with money, substance abuse, sexual relationships.”

And I read “poor outlook for treatment.”

“Did it remind you of anyone you know?”

“Of course it did,” I said.

“Why is it you can break up with running – something that made you happy — so easily but you can’t break up with this woman?” she said.

“It’s different. Running isn’t a person.”

“Here’s my gift to you this week,” Michelle said, ignoring my cop out, as she scribbled something on a notepad advertising a drug called Combunox . She tore off the slip of paper and passed it to me. On it she had written:

“Normally in therapy we let people talk and we don’t make judgments. We let them figure out where they want to be and help point them in the right direction to get there,” Michelle said. “But you – I’m worried about you. I’m worried that you’re in a full blown crisis and I worry about where you’re going to be in six months if you don’t get away from this girl.”

“Where’s that?”

“Worst case scenario?”

“Lay it on me — worst case scenario,” I said as if I really wanted to hear it.

“You’ll be dead.”
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This morning NPR Weekend Edition aired Scott Simon’s interview with Bill Steigerwald on his quest to retrace Steinbeck’s rout 50 years after the fact.

Bill Steigerwald’s “Travels Without Charley” continues to be a great read and has me thinking I may want to do a road trip of my own next summer (Steigerwald, as I previously posted, is retracing the trip Steinbeck took in 1960 and eventually wrote about in “Travels With Charley”).

For now, I’m happy to read along from the comfort of my own home. Bill was interviewed by Scott Simon for NPR”s Weekend Edition this week and will probably be heard Saturday morning.

So I had six or seven brave people over yesterday to sample recipes that I concocted, adapted or simply created to make use of a twelve pack of Samuel Adams fall beers that I had been given.

I think on the whole it was a hit, but this was the recipe that was the show stopper according to my guests (and is now going to be my entry in the Boston Local Food Festival Recipe Contest):

Harvest Pumpkin Ale Soup
Ingredients:
4.5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
One 12 oz.bottle Samuel Adams Pumpkin Harvest Ale
Four cups pumpkin puree
1.5 teaspoons salt
1 cup chopped onion
1/2 teaspoon thyme (fresh)
1 large clove garlic, minced
Black pepper
Tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon chopped parsley (fresh)

Directions
1. Saute garlic and onion in olive oil until softened, about five minutes. Add stock, beer, salt, pumpkin, onion, thyme, garlic, and pepper.
2. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.
3. Puree the soup with an immersion blender or in batches of 1 cup at a time in a food processor or blender.
4. Return to pan, and bring to a boil again. Reduce heat to low, and simmer for another 30 minutes, uncovered.
5. Ten minutes before serving stir in brown sugar.
6. Stir in heavy cream. Pour into soup bowls and garnish with fresh parsley.