So, uh, why do I have this blog and what is it all about?

First off, a little about me. My name is Rob Olsen, I develop software for a living. I’m married to a great wife, and I have three great children.

As for this blog, well, I discussed the “What” in this post. But I didn’t address the “Why”. Why have a blog? Why not just post to Facebook like everyone else?

You know, life’s funny sometimes. Back a million years ago when man was stepping out of the tar pits and Facebook was just becoming popular, I got signed up and started looking around to see what made this so much better than MySpace. Well, I poked around for a few months, and saw what my friends were eating for dinner. Then I read an article talking about the dangers of Social Media and insecurities inherent with putting that information out there. And that was it, no more Facebook for me!

But then along came Google+, and the mighty G proclaimed that it was much more secure and safe and better in every way than Facebook. And man, did I eat it up. Google+ was definitely the way to go, and that was where Social Media was heading. But like I said, life is funny sometimes. Turns out, even with my love of Google+, I still wasn’t posting, or even logging on to check to see if anyone else was posting. I just couldn’t muster up the willpower to care about it.

So it was BACK to Facebook. And this time, I was really going to try, because hey, 1 billion people can’t be wrong, right? Perhaps I missed what was so awesome about it the first time around. I updated my profile and uploaded the uniquest and most awesome photo of myself and really tried posting and reading other people’s posts. I read about what they ate for dinner, and what they ate for breakfast, and what they ate for lunch, and then what funny tricks they taught their dogs and what great vacations they just went on.

Until finally, I just stopped reading. There was just no way I could possibly care about a person that I last saw 15 years ago, let alone care about what they ordered at McDonald’s last night. I finally figured out what I hated so much about Facebook. Everyone was so vain! They all expected me to actually care about their lives! As if what happens to them each day were actually important! As I saw it, social media would be the beginning of the ultimate ‘me’ generation fueled by a desire to always think that what is happening to you is worth writing about.

Again, I’m going to ask you to please remember how funny life is.

So that was it, I removed all my friends and stopped Facebook all together. That was about a year ago. But you know what? There’s a little thing inside of me, and I think that this little thing was just dying. It was dying because this little thing loved doing all sorts of stuff, and it loved showing off all of that stuff to people, and receiving that most wonderful reward: praise! This little thing has had lots of different outlets in my life – band, piano, my photo club, web design, even a short stint at folk dancing.

Well, as the months went by with me rolling my eyes at the vanity of humanity, finally the logical part of me kicked in. I started to analyze my personal feeling with social media. And this really did take me a long time to think about. I tried to identify the exact things I didn’t like about Facebook. I didn’t like knowing that people skimmed over my posts. I didn’t like knowing that people didn’t care about my life. I didn’t like that what I thought wasn’t important to them. I didn’t… I didn’t… You guessed it, it was during this time that I realized something about myself.

I am, wholly, 100%, utterly and completely vain.

Somehow I had gotten my feelings for Facebook totally backwards! Facebook wasn’t overly irritating because I had to endure the vanity of the world. The problem was that Facebook was not nearly enough of a spotlight for me! I needed an area to shine all on my own. An area where every post is mine. The reason that I hated Facebook was because it wasn’t ROBbook!

So here I am, I have carved out a corner of the internet where I get to post all of my thoughts and pictures and videos and basically do all of the things I love. If people choose to come here, then perhaps they will enjoy my far-from-grammatically-correct writing style, or my only-a-little-better-than-amateur photography, or my Shyamalan-when-he-was-a-kid videos. And perhaps they will like them so much that they will come back to see them again. Or perhaps they won’t. But either way, I get to create, and if maybe a few people keep coming back, then I’ll get to show off, and perhaps if I’m funny enough, or clever enough, or crafty enough, then I will get that golden fruit that I crave so much: praise.

I’m so vain.

I think this song is about me.