As all bloggers have experienced over the last 3 years, the concept of sharing our thoughts, frustrations, and joys through short journal entries in a blog has changed. The social media webscape has forced that upon us and this is actually a good thing.

Tumblr, facebook, Twitter, and reams of other organizations provide canvases for us to share, share, and share. To top all of that off, I have gotten myself involved in activities and hobbies that no longer leave me time to blog as I frequently as I once did — and I don’t really need to.

The people that matter most to me are on facebook and see snippets of my life, as I see theirs. My brother and I have a photography business on the side with its own blog and we both spend lots of time on flickr.

I just don’t have the time to write down my thoughts about movies, theatre, and books with the same obsessiveness I once had. I’d like to, but I like too many things.

So what the heck am I going on about?

I’m saying that this blog is still a part of my life, but it’s a much smaller part than it once was because I share my thoughts in lots of other places. This is probably a good thing too because as I become more famous and sought-after for my opinions on movies, theatre, and books, it becomes more dangerous to have my life laid out in a single public forum on the internet.

At this point, I’m thinking that I’ll focus this blog more towards my experiences in dentistry. I’ll probably throw some interesting personal-life stuff in every now and then, but those of you that truly are interested in my personal life (god knows why you’d be) are already my friends on other sites where I expose more of myself anyway.

Refocusing has involved pausing my twitterfeed aggregation and limiting my use of Twitter. Facebook’s changes over the last year, along with a really useful RSS app, allows my brother and me to do things that we could only do in convoluted ways via Twitter in the past.

Times change and technology follows suit. Although the infrequent posts to this blog leave me appearing stifled, I am in fact the complete opposite because of these continuous innovations in the social media landscape.

Charismatic American leaders often have an interrupted life span. I know the following thought has crossed everyone’s mind in some form or another. From PostSecret:

I haven’t been able to do as much blogging as I would have liked these last few weeks because of the Pro Am that we were working towards, The Girl’s job transition, and our on-going landscaping project. Probably more importantly, however, some other internet interests have also captured my time.

Here’s a song that sums things up. I’ve reworked the lyrics to an Olivia Newton John song. The very first CD that I ever owned was one by her. Click the play button to listen to the song as you sing the lyrics below:

Maybe I hang around here
A little more than I should
The Girl says I’ve got somewhere else to go
But I got something to tell you
That I never thought I would
But I believe you really ought to know

I love you
I honestly love you

You don’t have to Comment
I see it in your Tweets
Maybe it was better left unsaid
This is pure and simple
And you should realize
That it’s coming from my heart and not my Wall

I love you
I need to Twitter you

I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable
I’m not trying to Chain Drop at all
But something like Entrecard doesn’t come along everyday
And you shouldn’t blow the chance
When you’ve got the chance to say

I love you
I have to email you

If we both were born
In another place and time
This moment might be ending on a BBS
But there you are with yours
And here I am with mine
So I guess we’ll just be leaving it at this

I love you
I really must blog you
I have to facebook you

I think that anything and everything that we do in life can be seen as a waste of time depending on the perspective. Isn’t art, however, all about perspective? And isn’t life all about the art of living and interacting with others?

Twitter doesn’t have to be about broadcasting your daily activities to the universe pointlessly. It doesn’t have to be about meeting strangers in a corner of the internet for mindless chatter. Instead it can be used for a greater good.

I am actively using Twitter to try to form an online community of people in the dental field who will be able to interact in real-time. Possibilities formed by this sort of interaction are endless, geeky, and a subject of future posts.

Here’s one Twitter experience that will give you a hint of the usefulness of real-time online social media and the relevance it might have to our daily practise of dentistry. The players are I and some buddies that I made on Twitter. These buddies are dentists and a non-dentist — a patient. The director of the production is Twitter itself. The Washington Post blogged about our shenanigans here.

Microblogging on Twitter will never replace continuing education courses or blogs themselves as a vehicle for detailed dental information. The art of Twitter, though, is perspective.

Twitter will give patients a view into a dentist’s day and it will give dentists a view into one another’s practice. Questions will be asked, opinions will be given, and through all of this new perspectives of dentistry will be developed by patients and people within the dental field together.

Join me on Twitter if you’re interested. Check out my follow list for other dental professionals and add them too. Let’s get talking:

Over the past couple of years, my wife and I have had very separate and busy lives throughout the day. Of course this means that the time that we do have together is valuable. We often find ourselves driving in our separate cars, on separate roads, but with an intent to end at the same destination at a specific time. A good example of this is when we have to meet at the dance studio after work.

We presented a Foxtrot routine last night at the studio and although it went decently, we had our usual timing issues with the music. The Girl was pissed off enough about her performance afterwards that she had more than a couple of glasses of wine at the studio after our routine. This was before she remembered that we had driven separately and would have to leave in separate cars.

I’ve currently got a Yaris that is a courtesy rental while my car is yet again in for some repair work. The Yaris is an odd little car and I can’t get used to the fact that the speedometer sits in the middle of the dashboard to the right of the driver. This is a perfect location for backseat drivers to see how fast you’re going, but not all that great for the driver themselves. I thought that maybe a GPS pops out of the dash in front of the driver. Alas, that’s not the case.

Anyway, I ended up leaving the rental at the studio and drove The Girl’s car home with both of us in it. We drove back to the studio this morning to pick the rental up and then I headed home while she headed off to do some temping work. She was ahead of me on the road. And this is what transpired on facebook:

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