"There, they're, their..."

You know what I just love? Like really, really love? *insert sarcastic face here* 

I love when people choose to go all grammar nazi on me. 

Does living in Germany for over a year make it okay for me to use that word? Nah, let’s look at some alternatives here: grammar police, prescriptivist, language enthusiasts? Take your pick.

Well once whoever it is has called me out on my murder of the English language, they usually follow their helpful "edification" with that look of complete smug superiority that says "I just corrected you, English Major"; usually followed by some variation on: “This is going to be your career, right? Shouldn’t you know these things?”

Thanks Sherlock. I forgot about my degree there for a minute – it’s not like I have nightmares about my non-existent future career, or anything.

There are many things that I excel at…talking, card making, scarf knitting, and I make a mean avocado quesadilla.

 I’m also really good at being obnoxious, stalkerish and obsessive – three wonderful qualities I’m sure you all wish you had. Really, I’m like Colin Creevey: with the camera.(Sometimes I think I would have made a great serial killer, sans the killing part. I get squeamish around blood).

But of all my wonderful talents and traits – a complete and perfect understanding of the English language is not one of them. 

Yes, I’m an English Major; yes, I love grammar; yes I am currently an employed editor; and yes I read the dictionary for fun. Does that make me an expert? Man, I wish.

I’m terrible at sentence diagramming, I make words up on the spot all the time, and I have no idea why lasagna and bologna don’t rhyme. Stick me in a spelling bee and I will spell “definitely” wrong every single time, without fail. 

What do you think I’m going to school for? 

I also feel like there’s this universal, unwritten law that says, “If you study grammar, you don’t need to use it”. Well...maybe I should modify that statement to say, “If you study grammar, you don’t need to use it correctly." Honestly, my human ineptitude at speaking my own language shows faster than you can say "FIX IT!"

Aw well...I suppose this tangent is long enough to be a blog post now. Better just be done with it.

Has blogging died?

Let’s think about this for a minute: blogging used to be the social media highlight of life. It seemed like everyone and their dog (but really…their dog) had a site dedicated to the world wide dispersal of all warranted (or mostly unwarranted) rants about life. Once their site was up they’d e-mail us the links, we would read it and share it with others, and then sometimes respond with our own posts…It was like group therapy on internet steroids.

Once upon a time I was a blogger too; a life writer; a link sharer; an emotionally avid journal…er (who sometimes liked to make up words). I had my own dedicated hours of rant time, in which I would join the ranks of self-obsessed emotional teenagers – spilling my guts on the web with the best of them (a mistake most of your teenagers will make at least every single day).

I don’t know what happened really. One day I was writing down everything, every day, on every surface I could find (blog site, notebook, journal, the napkin I found crumpled up forgotten in my bag, etc.) – the next I was noticing my forgotten journal atop my equally forgotten bookshelf – picking it up on a whim and reading the last entry (written at least two months prior): “Today I did stuff. The end.” 

Maybe it was the fact that I no longer cared about that girl who make fun of me in 4^th period English, or the boy who forgot to wave at me this morning (which meant he obviously had feelings for her, not me)…*insert insecure feelings here*. 

[Seriously though…middle school – are those years kind to anyone?]

That being said – have I really grown up at all? In the grand scheme of things I can still count my “maturity” on one hand (I’m only 5 years fresh from my own High School years).

I think the reality of the matter is we, as human beings, have become increasingly impatient with the world of information.

We want our updates, and we want them now.

It’s all about short, quick and instant gratification these days.

In our ever advancing social media-tic world, if we can’t figure you out within the realms of a fast tweet, quick status update, or Instagram – then we move on to another post. It's as if we find your doings not worth knowing at all.

[Side note: Mediatic…I know that’s not a word, but it’s fun to say, so I’m keeping it].

In today’s electronic society, brevity is the new black.

Brevity is the new everything.

I'll be the first to confess that I never read full articles anymore. I’ll open up a post with an intriguing title, find that I somewhat like the photo and ten word summary provided at the top of the page, and then next thing I know I’m sharing this "OMGOSH this really touched me!" post on my wall – regardless of what the remaining 360 + unread words might have said.

And since this post is all about brevity - here's a long story about that:

Once upon a month or so ago, two of my totally awesome and now completely broke brothers took a cross country trip – driving from AZ to NYC: stopping to “site-see” in multiple states along the way. They documented their journey online, with constant (and I mean constant) photo updates at each of their various stops. 

Like the rest of the ‘stuck-at-home’ jealous Facebookers online, I found myself being equally constant in my "liking" of all their posts. I commented on their albums: “Give me more!”, when in reality I barely even looked at half of the photos they did post, and read only the first few lines of any "wordy" update they gave.

If I had already liked the album, I never opened it up again to see the new posts.

I pretended to be super interested in their journey, when in reality, I was as guilty as the rest of them – even when it came to my own family – in ignoring the real connection that can come from a conversation of events.

I made up for this (in part) by later receiving phone calls and chatting at length with my brothers about their trip and the adventures they had - even managing to keep my own personal experiences in some of those places to a minimum (though - let it be noted that my definition of "to a minimum" might be different than Paul's or Joe's. I'm not known for keeping things 'short' when it comes to story telling).

So, now that I've sufficiently written enough to make this post 'blog' length acceptable, I'll just end with a quick haiku:

We value our words 

In our "media-tric" world,

Choosing each with care.

And yet we say not

All the real things we have thought,

And brevity wins.

Until next time...