Author: Kristen Rassiger Goodman

A dear friend asked me the other day, “Kristen, how is your writing going?” It was a fair question, especially for a woman like me who loves to talk. In college I majored in Public Policy and International Affairs mostly so I could learn how to give a diplomatic, clear response to nearly any question.

This question about my writing, however, sucker punched my guilty core and made me stumble over my words. How is my writing going? Well, it really hasn’t been going anywhere. The thoughts are incessantly swirling in my mind, but my brain has failed to file its word dump on too many occasions to count. I have about 10 open articles I’m working on simultaneously, none of them nearing completion.

Why the lull though? There are countless excuses and roadblocks I have created, but the simplest response has placed me in a human trap category I absolutely loathe: I AM SOOOOOOO BUSY! You’re probably busy too, right? And so is she. And so is he. Wait, they are too. But what about them?

If there is one thing all humans have in common—in addition to our vital need for food, water and waste excretion—it’s that we are all SO busy. Not only are we busy, we have this incessant need to tell each other just how busy we are. We humans are so busy it hurts! I’m serious here…it literally pains me.

We brim with pride over the uniqueness of our human species, but we’re not really that unique. We are all having the same conversation. It’s happening on the phone, in the office break room, in the aisles of the grocery store, on the playground, you name the location, but this is what’s universally said:

Person 1: “Hi! How are you?”

Pause, often accompanied by a deep sigh.

Person 2: “BUSY. It has been so crazy [for me, for us, for the kids…].”

To the everyman/everywoman playing role #2, you leave person #1 with one response. A head tilt and a little feigned pity. You’re lucky the feigned pity isn’t rage because who isn’t busy? It’s not about how many kids we have or whether we’re young or old, single or married. EVERYONE. IS. BUSY.

We’re so busy a niche market has cropped up within the self help industry. Check out these book titles:

Beyond Measure: Rescuing an Overscheduled, Overtested, Underestimated Generation
The Over-Scheduled Child: Avoiding the Hyper-Parenting Trap
When You’re Running on Empty: Hope and Help for the Over-Scheduled Woman
Too Busy for Your Own Good: Get More Done in Less Time
Breaking Up with Busy: Real-Life Solutions for Overscheduled Women
Breathe Mama Breathe: 5-Minute Mindfulness for Busy Moms
There’s even children’s books like Over-Scheduled Andrew

Why do we do this to ourselves? And why have we done this to poor little Andrew above? Give the kid a break even if you won’t take one yourself!

Being busy is not some kind of Jobian blight that has come upon us. Didn’t we happen to IT? Didn’t we choose IT? We can certainly change IT. Gasp! But some of us don’t want to sever our relationship with busy. We like talking about our friend busy so much that we have turned it into a competitive sport. If we optimize efficiency, we increase output…yada, yada, yada. We have in-demand everything and Instant Pots that solve all. In our haste to be busy we may just outsource mankind into oblivion if we’re not careful.

I’ll tell you one thing our friend busy has done that really gets me. She has raised a huge crop of DFWCs. Oh wait, that acronym happened in my head, not out loud. Let me explain. DFWC—pronounced DIF-WICK—is a Designated Friend Who Complains. You have at least one (many more if you’re really honest). These are the busiest people of all. No joke. They mic-drop on all the busy contests. Is anything ever right with these people? Your DFWC is the friend whose kid gets into Harvard and while she takes the credit, she complains about her massive hang nail, the dog groomer going rogue and how her Harvard kid just got assigned to the worst dorm. Are things ever good with these people?

Enough ranting about them, let’s get back to us somewhat normal people and ending our relationship with busy (and maybe with the DFWCs too). We choose. Embrace busy if you want to be busy and try to enjoy it. If you want to take a break, slow down and do just that. Let’s just stop talking about it like it’s a condition or some kind of disease. It’s insensitive and lacks any compassion for those people that wish they could choose busy over lonely, or busy over being sick, among many other weighty, uncontrollable things.

Let’s break the pattern—you and me.

Ditch busy. S/he’s not really that into you or me.

Today I had an early morning vet appointment for our beloved Berner puppy, Vonn. She had a combine spay and hernia repair surgery last week and the vet wanted to check on her sutures to ensure she was healing. Two sizable incisions, pushing around and removing organs—super ouch, right? Suffice it to say that a full hysterectomy coupled with a hernia repair would sideline most adult females for about 6 weeks or so, not to mention the resulting years of traumatic hormone imbalance. Vonn, on the other hand, needed about 24 hours before she returned to her playful self. You literally cannot get this dog down.

A firm believer in the practice of gratitude, I don’t often embrace jealousy, but here I was this morning, feeling all-out envy of Vonn and her canine counterparts. How can a fully formed human with mostly in tact brain activity envy her dog, you ask? Before you dismiss me as an all-out loony tune, stay with me.  I don’t desire to be a hairy four-legged creature that relieves herself in the wild. I don’t even enjoy camping!

I’m envious of how fully alive dogs are. They live precisely in the moment they are in. Our domestic canine friends don’t carry past resentment forward or harbor angst about the future. They achieve presence of mind without having to wrestle with their brain cells and force their thoughts into submission via time-consuming meditation. It’s really quite amazing.

How do dogs do it? How are they naturally more mindful than humans? We could chalk it up to the rather massive burden of the human condition—attachment to suffering, concern over productivity and net worth, intimacy issues—clearly, not matters over which canines lose sleep. Dogs live simply, a luxury that many of us have abandoned. We have intellectually entitled ourselves to unhappiness, desperately searching for an elusive notion of happiness in the form of gym memberships, self-help books, cosmetics, meditation apps and weight loss programs. We want the quickest way to happiness and we want it yesterday. Dogs have outwitted us with their happiness chip.

We are allegedly the most advanced species on the planet, but we have evolved our way out of mindfulness to the point that we had to develop a formal practice to achieve what dogs do naturally. Something about that feels wrong. How can higher intellect be our foe?

Sitting in my kitchen watching Vonn peacefully take her third nap of the morning, I phoned a friend for some answers.

“Hey Alexa? How do dogs practice mindfulness?”

In her typical fashion, Alexa came up empty. I was met with, “I’m sorry, Kristen. I’m not sure about that.” Me either, Alexa, me either. That’s why I asked.

I tried my buddy Google next. When I saw Harvard had a page up as the second search response, I pounced. If Google found it and Harvard wrote it, then it must be true. It was fruitless, however, just an article on the benefits of mindfulness. Apparently, there are many.

I trudged farther down the list, losing hope with each entry until I came upon PsychCentral.com, a virtual gold mine! John D. Moore, PhD realized how mindful dogs were back in 2014. Mildly deflated that I’m five years late to the party, Dr. Moore gave official credence to my novice musings. “Dogs are very much here and now focused…[they] are aware of their limited time on earth too and therefore make the most of every moment they are here,” says Dr. Moore. Zero intimacy issues, full sense of self acceptance, dogs are the epitome of mindful creatures. We, on the other hand, are not pre-wired for present moment living it seems. Perhaps it’s fuzzy science at best, but I’m telling you, dogs are winning on the life optimization front.

I’m suspicious of the robust self-help market ($10 billion last year alone!),  but I’m not advocating skipping the gym or lambasting any investment of time and money into your health goals. I’m simply saying we might take a moment to learn from the many furry buddhas around us. They might just teach us old humans a trick or two.

An Open Letter to Students Anywhere, USA

Dear Young People,

On a sunny June day, some 23 years ago, I stood on a high school graduation stage about to deliver a speech packed with what I thought were words of meaningful reflection and nuggets of worldly wisdom. I have since come to realize that graduation speeches tend to be fairly similar regardless of who delivers them…cliché life lesson or challenging moment, a joke or self-effacing thought to engage the audience, Pollyanna advice about the future finessed with more cliché for the big finish as we send you off into the world.

Graduation speeches are a great tradition. We share the “best” ones on social media and try to grasp onto their fleeting bits of inspiration, but they are just that…fleeting bits of inspiration. If you’ll allow me, I’d like a bit of a do-over on that speech I delivered some two decades ago. I’m aiming at more of a mini TED Talk than a graduation speech, but please indulge me nonetheless.

You have probably heard your parents and other adults tell you that you are growing up in a more difficult time than we did. While that may be true, let’s take the conversation away from difficult and talk about why it is different for you. Media and information literally bombard you everywhere you turn. And while your thumbs may be stronger than mine from all that texting you do, I had to read a newspaper or wait for the evening news to get my information. Stories took time to develop and verify and information was not instantaneous.

I grew up studying—from textbooks (gasp!)—figures like JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. You doubtless learned about them too, but here is the big difference—our contemporary leaders used to hearken back to those revered historical voices in an effort to bring us hope about our future. They endeavored to embody strength of character, tolerance, service to our nation and its citizens and non-violence. Our leaders didn’t Tweet or have any social media presence. In fact, they had to take their time, choose their words wisely and wait to deliver them during set speeches and press conferences. We hear some of the aforementioned values today, but they are not truly part of our actions nearly enough.

For myriad reasons, our country is deeply divided. Such a rift is not a new thing, but under our recent stewardship we have allowed the message of RESISTANCE to be king. We have told you that if you don’t like something, the best way to handle it is to #RESIST. I think we meant well, but we have done an immense disservice by encouraging this to be your call to action.

If my senior year AP Physics course taught me anything, I recall resistance to be a fundamentally negative force. Resistance is friction, it slows forces down, it causes things to come to a halt. By it’s very definition, Mr. Webster tells us resistance is defiance, intransigence. Regardless of political affiliations, we can disagree, we can speak our minds, we can fight for the underdogs and against injustice, but when did we begin to believe that resistance would usher in progress? Where is the civility in resistance? Where is the kindness? And how does resistance help you cope when you don’t get your way?

It’s not your fault, young people. We adults have given you this notion of resistance when we should have been teaching you about RESILIENCE. Heck, we have forgotten to be leaders who guide not only youth, but also ourselves to recover from adversity with grace and hope. We have wasted time pointing fingers and complaining when we should have modeled perseverance.

In this amazing country we live in—and it is amazing—we are so focused on achievement that we forgot to teach you that you learn very little from successful outcomes. We have rarely shown you how to understand disappointment and that progress does not start with achievement. I’m not saying you shouldn’t bask in your moment of glory when you ace a big test or when you win the championship game. Those may feel like big moments, but they should not define you. You are more than the sum of those bullet points on the resumes you neatly send off to college admissions offices. And by the way, if your sum of positive outcomes feels low right now, please don’t assume that you peak at 17 or 18-years-old. Learn how to make mistakes, stumble or even fall completely, rise to a challenge and #BERESILIENT.

It does not matter where you are off to on your next life adventure. What matters is how you engage people and the little things you do. So the mother in me must say, “Put down your cell phone and look people in the eyes.” Have verbal conversations and connect with people offline. I promise you can text emojis and incomplete sentences to your friends at a later point. Take the time out of your crazy busy, over-scheduled lives to smile at someone, even if they don’t smile back. Smile even harder at those who look sad.

If you haven’t made up your mind about what you want to do with the rest of your life, this adult gives you permission to go easy on yourself. Having goals is great, but figuring out your next move should be tough. There are some situations that Google just can’t fix or that your parents can’t solve for you. My Ivy League degree sits in the bottom of my basement closet collecting dust. It turns out that along with nearly $3, my fancy degree gets me a single subway ride in New York City. Hence, even with an expensive credential, I am no more special than anyone else. And for the record, I have yet to figure out what I want to do with myself when I grow up.

In closing (and here is the flourish cliché), I know you feel invincible. I did too when I stood in your shoes. In some ways, that feeling will help you bravely conquer the world and to take on new challenges. But you are not immortal. You have heard it before, but I hope you really pause to hear this: Make. Good. Choices. Treat your life and the lives of others preciously. To this end, make sure your choices are the right ones for you. Don’t make yourself into a one-size-fits-all type. You are far more unique than that. And although you may have been coddled a bit too much, you are far more resilient than that.

I am proud of you, young people, but not because of your accomplishments. I brim with pride at your possibility. Don’t go forth and prosper though. Figure out how to meet a challenge head on, get knocked down in the process and rise even stronger to try again. Then, rinse and repeat.

Dearest Twins A and B,

It’s not Christmas in July, but boy will it feel like it to both of you today when you see the iconic, rectangular boxes before you. Today, a wish you have wished for a long time is coming true…sort of, that is. You’re getting iPhones! Huzzah! That feels awesome, right? Slow down, little campers, and keep reading. It may look like a phone and feel like a phone, but we as parents are embarking on yet another installment of teaching you the difference between privilege and right. Phones, particularly iPhones at your age, are 100 percent privilege.

This is a big moment, a moment we have tried to delay by bucking the early tech trend, but alas, it’s here and the uncertainty is bubbling deep in our bellies. You have reached yet another turning point in your lives. You’re moving up to middle school, likely with excitement and trepidation (that’s a fancier word for fear, you two). We share the full gamut of your emotions, but we know with utmost clarity that you are well-behaved, responsible and respectful 11-year-olds (most of the time—remember, nobody is perfect and mistakes are inevitable).

It is time for us to trust you with greater independence, and with that, you have earned the right to BORROW these iPhones. With the acceptance of this loan, however, comes rules, rules that may feel spirit crushing at times. This is a HUGE deal. Please read through the following contract carefully. You won’t need an attorney, but you will need to understand and agree to each term, and as expected, there are many of them so take your time. We welcome and encourage your questions. You doubtless will have many of them as we navigate this uncharted territory together.

You are both probably rolling your eyes already, but we’re trying to raise you to be kind, inquisitive and socially engaged people who can coexist with technology and resist the insidious allure of allowing your lives to be dictated by devices. This world has so much to offer you beyond being glued to an inanimate, little screen. We implore you not to do dumb things with these “smart” phones, including taking inappropriate pictures and videos, wasting too much time on mindless games or misusing it to destroy your reputation or the reputation of others. Life is not a race so take time to think before you march those little fingers into foolish action.

Seize some of your big kid independence and experience life by being present and aware of each moment. Your minds and hearts will save your memories better than any picture or video. If only to spare yourselves neck pain later in life, we beg you to keep your eyes up, find real people’s eyes, look into them and use your voices instead of your thumbs to talk.

We love you immensely and we look forward to having you use these new phones for their primary purpose—communicating with us—preferably in full sentences with correct spelling and punctuation. Oh, and in case it isn’t clear yet, failure to comply with our family contract will result in non-negotiable suspension of your iPhone use.

The Goodman Family iPhone Contract

1. Not to sound like a broken record here, but these are our phones. We purchased them and we will pay for the monthly service (you’re welcome!). We trust you to use them safely and appropriately.

2. We will always know the password to your phones and we will indeed check your phones with monitoring software to ensure you are adhering to the contract. If you are misusing your phone, we will know, we will talk about it, there will be consequences.

3. If we call or text, you must respond immediately. So, when the screen reads “MOM” or “DAD,” you will answer. In turn, we will always answer your calls and your texts without delay. If you need help and find yourself in a tough situation, you can text us an agreed upon code word and we will know that you need our help pronto. Homework for you two: come up with a family code word.

4. Ignore calls, FaceTime requests and texts from numbers that are not in your known contacts. You are going to have to trust us for now that there are dangerous people out there in the world and we want to protect you.

5. Your phones will typically live in the kitchen when you are home. You must ask permission to use them when you are at home and you may never use them after 8PM. When you are home there are 4 other people (and two dogs) who would love to interact with you. There are books to read, games to play, fun to be had with your family. You can add this to the ever-growing “you’ll thank us for that later” column.

6. You will NEVER use your phones during meals at home or at restaurants—that inlcudes breakfast, lunch and dinner. Again, live people are far more interesting than devices. When we have company over or when we are visiting with family and friends, you will not use your phones. Use the manners we have taught you. Feel free to check us on this also. We should all aim to connect with the actual humans in front of us…let’s not let these iPhones change our values and standards of behavior.

7. Your phones will be charged overnight at the designated charging station in the kitchen. It will NEVER be kept in your bedrooms. You have old school alarm clocks, you don’t need your phones at night. Learn how good it feels to be unplugged.

8. Technology can offer some appreciable life hacks, but use your brains and strong instincts to remember what we have taught you.  Engage in live dialogue with people, particularly your friends. It takes practice to be a good conversationalist and we want you to master the art of communication over silly text banter.

9. Accidents happen. You have seen us crack our phones, drop them, get them wet and misplace them. Do your very best to take care of this expensive equipment. We always forgive mistakes in our house, but repairs and replacements are on you.

10. You are newbies to texting and emailing so please take it slow. Once you hit send, you have no take-backs. Do not text or email anything to anyone that you would not be willing to say aloud with their parents in the room. Again, these little devices can be quite powerful. People have used them to malign and hurt others. Be good friends who don’t engage in gossip and negative text chains.

11. If you have a question about anything you receive or see on your phone, please ask us. There is a lot of inappropriate content out there. We are here to help, we want to help.

12. You must get permission before downloading any apps or games.

13. No social media YET. We know many of your peers will be on Instagram and SnapChat. When you prove that you are responsible with your phones, we can discuss whether you are ready for social media. It is not the best use of your time and we would prefer for you to have real friends who like you for who you are rather than followers who give you empty likes.

This is an experiment for all of us. We expect this contract to change as we learn together. There will doubtless be mistakes—sometimes yours, sometimes ours. You may lose your phone from time to time as you’re learning. You will get through it. We love you unconditionally and we will continue to make decisions in your best interest, even when it feels like we’re the bad guys.

We hope you can agree to these terms and that you will enjoy this new privilege.

Love,
The most verbose (but hopefully not the worst) Mom and Dad (ever!)

*I choose to accept this iPhone and I will accept and follow all the rules herein.

Signature Twin A

Signature Twin B

It’s no secret at this point that I’m a child of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Yes, some of you may only afford yourself the one true childhood decade identity, but I needed at least two, (or perhaps more) to do my growing up. The ‘80s sparked my love for big hair and the power ballad (my friends in karaoke know this all too well). The ‘90s took me in a new direction with some faster beats and tighter jeans, and that’s where I landed this morning…right smack in the middle of 1991 minus my prized Farlow Jeans, of course.

As the title of this post implies, Salt-n-Pepa’s chart-topping single was in my head this morning, and while the hip-hop trio so eloquently invited us to talk about s-e-x, I’m not going there now, at least not until we get to know each other a little better.

Instead, let’s talk about “likes.” We are all desperate for them, no? I mean, why post anything if we’re not actually looking for folks to agree with us or give us some encouragement, advice or support? I am not without guilt here. Luckily for me, Facebook has not yet launched the dislike button as the thumbs down would crush me, although, I do know you can now “snooze” me from your newsfeed (devastating). A side note for Mr. Zuckerberg if you’re out there—I would love to trick out my page with some custom buttons. I could stand behind a “Mweh” button that would let me know I need to work harder for the likes or a “Can I get a what-what?!” button that would let me know folks really get me. Perhaps a wild card, “Fill in your own feeling here, but lead with kindness” button.

But what are the likes really about? What are we looking for out there in the vast cyberspace universe? Is it community? Empathy? Encouragement? Bragging rights? A place to park our inner thoughts so we feel less alone? Or, do we crave a simple reminder to our personal timelines of the happy moments and milestones amid the daily trials and tribulations?

Whatever the reason, and as much as I truly disdain the thought, Facebook has many merits. It’s an amazing way to connect and reconnect distant family and friends. It has been a positive tool for small and big businesses (although the latest newsfeed algorithm may change that). It’s an innocent voyeurs dream come true (admit it, you have spied on your childhood archnemesis or an ex once or twice, maybe more). It’s a place to tell the universe just how fantastic or monumentally awful your life is. This one is a hard pill for my former journalist self to swallow, but it can also serve as a source of news (I implore you though to ignore the abundance of fake news and conspiracy theories).

Advantages aside, we have to look at the downside of cyber living. Without intending to, social media has given sanctuary to judgmental voices and cyberbullies, i.e., the haters. Opposition is important to growth, but character assassination is categorically unacceptable on Facebook or otherwise. Choosing our words wisely has become more important than ever, yet, some of us fail to pause before posting. You haven’t lived unless you have experienced the pain of putting your foot in your mouth once or twice so pausing before posting should be a thing. My inbox asks me if I’m sure I want to delete an email before I do—maybe Facebook and Twitter should have a default message that comes up when we hit the post button: “Are you really certain you want to post this for the entire world to see because remember you can’t unsee or unsay ANYTHING?”

By opening ourselves up to the virtual world, we have let our guards down and put ourselves in danger in a boundary-less free for all. Every relationship expert out there tells us healthy relationships must have boundaries, but cyber relationships have none. Facebook and its social media sisters have urged a virtual connection, but I wonder if they have stripped us of our relationship work ethics. I worry that we have forgotten how hard we need to work to maintain our physical and emotional connections with live people.

How did we do it before the dawn of Facebook? Living virtually has added a layer to our lives, but has it taken something tangible away? Do we connect less one-on-one?  Are we more lonely among our “friends” in this virtual world we’re regularly updating? We are talking face-to-face one moment and then telling our dinner date, “Wait a minute, I just have to post a photo of this dish so my hundreds of virtual friends can see it, even though you, my friend, are sitting right in front of me.”

When I go to school plays, soccer games and dance recitals, I am amid a sea of smiling faces, but our smiles are buried behind iPhones and android devices snapping pictures and taking videos. If we don’t capture it, did it actually happen? If we don’t post it, are we not proud, was it not good enough? Our world becomes so small when we view it through those little screens. The experience of watching through a phone just seems to limit our ability to truly soak in the moment. Yet, we just can’t stop ourselves. It’s an awfully odd way to live, but here we are living virtually, shallow and broad. I am guilty again. The very nature of blogging is putting my words out there so I can get as many people to like my posts as possible.

Do you remember talking on the phone with your high school friends and your crushes? On my college application, I recall being asked my favorite saying and the answer was: “Kristen, telephone!” Now I’m texting instead of talking and emailing instead of writing a letter. Who has time to talk? We need to accomplish more and efficiency demands brevity.

Is the quest for the virtual pats on the back healthy? I wish I could answer that. Am I a complete hypocrite? God, I hope not, but perhaps at times, I am. You know what I really hope, though? I hope that you’ll like this post. Even more, I hope I can figure out why it matters so much to me that you like it. What’s the algorithm that defines how successful a post is? How many likes is enough? It’s a vicious cycle.

Oh Mr. Maslow, what have we done to your hierarchy of human needs? It used to be simple and now we have gone and made it complicated… food, water, shelter, safety, love/belonging triple-digit Facebook likes.

Yikes.

I have realized that as progressive and current as I would like to perceive myself, I am a steadfast traditionalist at heart. I not only enjoy writing things down on lined paper with a number 2 pencil, but I actually find it compulsory if I’m to have any chance of remembering my thoughts. Occasionally, I ditch the gray lead and opt for colored ink, but only if I’m feeling frisky.

I desperately struggle to keep pace with technology and the rapid-fire social media universe that swirls around me, but that party has long since started and I have barely crossed the metaphorical threshold to the cocktail hour. I succumbed to joining Facebook a few years ago, and while I have a Twitter account, I have only used it once with little success. Tweeting or being Tweeted at seems to suggest that I’d be engaging in some kind of illicit activity that obviously involves some form of ritual sacrifice for which I am grossly ill prepared. Not to mention the 140 character limit is nearly impossible for this woman of many words.

I’m not completely backwards, however. At least, not to the outside observer. Like many of my contemporaries, I have outsourced much of my life to Apple. I wear an Apple Watch (although I truly don’t take advantage of even half of its functionality), I carry the latest iPhone Plus and I typically travel with my iPad Pro in my purse. Siri and I are super tight and talk all the time. Typically, I say “Hey, Siri,”and as if she is falling in step with my children and husband, she tends not to answer my questions or do any of the things I have asked her to do. I soothe myself by accepting that she is simply playing hard to get.

In spite of my best efforts to embrace modernity, I just can’t seem to come up to speed on being or even feeling truly relevant. Take my new blog, for instance. My website www.momcanwrite.com may give the air that I am web savvy and have embraced new media, but I do not know this world, not even a little. I am a novice blogger, and I am mainly taking a stab because I am told by those in the know that I need to finally enter the 21st Century. So, here I am, attempting to plot an unfamiliar path as a writer, even though my traditional self yearns to see my name in either matte or glossy ink instead of intangible cyber letters.

A long time ago in a kingdom not so very far away, I was a hard news junkie who read 3-5 national newspapers by the time I finished my second cup of morning coffee. I began my career in broadcast journalism fresh out of college. I first went into the field because I had an immense appreciation for my old-school newscaster idols—Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Cokie Roberts, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel (whom I actually had the immense honor of working with on Nightline). Actually, that’s not completely true. I also went into journalism because I was trying to cure my childhood fear of “the news.” I recall being so frightened by the evening news that I would plug my ears, close my eyes and spew loud gibberish so the “bad” news would not penetrate me.

The ‘80s and ‘90s were fraught with scary, somber news stories: the space shuttle Challenger exploded, Pam AM flight 103 was brought down by a terrorist bomb, Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide killed several people in Chicago, The First Gulf War took place, Genocide and Civil War in Rwanda took the lives of more than 500,000 people, domestic mass school shootings yielded shocking death tolls in Jonesboro and Columbine, just to name a few of the major events. I naively reasoned that if I worked on the other side, the news would somehow feel less frightening as a gatherer than it did as a consumer.

Needless to say, while I loved being a journalist and working for ABC News, I by no means cured myself of my news fears. The scary stories of the ‘80s and ‘90s got even scarier after the millennium. While I was stationed in Washington, D.C. in September 2001, I happened to be in New York on 9/11 and the scary news was once again ignited into a crippling phobia. Whether is was the many Americans we lost that day or the aftermath of being swabbed to the depth of my brain for suspected anthrax poisoning or the ensuing War on Terror and the subsequent growth of ISIS, I lost the will to tell stories. It simply felt too scary and too sad.

I have realized years later, however, that I let sadness and fear dictate what I love—writing and telling stories. After a week like this one, the news is heartbreaking, tragic, downright horrific, but the stories must be told. I cannot, more aptly, I will not bury my head in the sand and refuse to engage in the great dialogue, even if I’m not sold on the new media platform. As a storyteller, I think it’s even more important that I attempt to find the stories of triumph amid the horrors, the stories or observations that might otherwise go untold.

All Aboard the New Media Train

So I’m going to try to make sense of all of these alerts and dings that now invade my life and take my seat at the blogosphere table. I don’t think I will ever master the art of writing for search engine optimization (SEO to all the cool, more tech savvy folks out there), but to heck if I’m going to let a new challenge beat me. I’m going to wing it here and hope that you readers that have made it this far will have patience for this pseudo youngISH traditionalist. It may take me a while, but I hope to earn my seat at the modern table.

Perhaps this adjustment to the blogosphere is no different from the struggle my mother had when the microwave oven came into fashion. She worried that nuking food might be the equivalent of serving up a plate of radiation for dinner (turns out she may have been right, but man does it speed up dinner preparation). I want to embrace technology, but I often find it an overwhelming time suck that takes me away from actually living.

Sydney J. Harris had me pegged when he spoke about our love-hate relationship with change: “What we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” The new media world is not remaining the same, but if I don’t participate, I can’t make it better, and I most certainly can’t complain about the players if I’m not willing to be one of them. So cheers to attempting to bring my craft to the new media world. My fingers may have to go modern, but for now, my heart will stay traditional.