SecondIron's Blog

Sharpening Iron to Live Second

How Real are Your Social Media Friends?

Last week I posted on social media on my Facebook account that I needed to change the people I hung out with. I was not pointing fingers or making accusations, yet some got very defensive. I received comments and direct messages of concern and anxiety. People wondering if they had done something or if I was okay. Granted it was nice to see the people who genuinely cared for my well-being.  Even more, it was interesting to see those that didn’t bother to comment either way. I am not judging a fleeting moment on social media to gauge my friendships, neither should you. Friends on social media are usually taken at face value, for we don’t have much else to go on. However they many times will behave more like your friends than your real ones. What is your ROI of your social media friends? #socialmedia Click To Tweet This little exercise accomplished a few things for me. What was merely a simple statement of fact of where my head and heart was at, also perhaps provided some insight into relationships and social media? Social Media is Surface Level – We get so wrapped up in the statuses, feeds and 140 character snippets of people’s’ lives we forget to create relationships with the people. Glued to our smartphones, we would likely not even recognize the person outside of the avatar small square, much less in real life. People are easily offended – Ever type an email or text message that was taken out of context? […]

In the spirit of giving and compassion

We are entering into the season of giving and will be spending time and money on our family and friends to share the holiday spirit.  While we all tend to get caught up in the material side of Christmas and the real meaning slips away a little bit.   While we are bombarded by the glam and glitter of the sales and the last-minute shopping for those that mean the most to us, we all tend to forget. We forget the homeless man on the street corner that was holding the cardboard sign this morning on the way to work this morning. We forget the pregnant single mother that is scraping together change to buy groceries at the store; we get impatient that this woman was not prepared to pay for what she picked to feed herself.  We forget the elderly widow down the street that will be alone with her T.V. dinner on Christmas as her children no longer visit her.  We forget the neglected and abused dogs and cats in the shelters and on the streets that eat scraps and fight to stay alive another night.  We forget all these things as we rack up our credit card bills buying Christmas gifts that will end up in someone’s closet, garage or yard sale.  We are consumed with the newest and shiniest item this year, while there are others that would be doubly blessed with our hand me downs that we are apt to throw away this year to make room for the new. In […]