Day 12

First, a confession.
I thought that when the holidays started, I'd have plenty of time to do whatever I wanted. I'd learn all sorts of new skills and improve the ones I'd already got. I'd have lots of fantastic experiences like they show in the holiday brochures and make this a summer I'd never forget. How could that not happen in two completely free months?

Predictably, that didn't happen. In fact, most of my days so far have been divided between three websites: Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

For me, the attraction of social networking is the anticipation of what's going to pop up next. On Twitter, I follow about a hundred people who all tweet interesting things. This makes me reluctant to leave the website, because the next tweet to pop up might just change my life. And if it did, how relieved I would be that I didn't leave the site! But then the next tweet appears, and it's a picture of a dog wearing glasses. Cute, but hardly groundbreaking.

Regarding Facebook, I tell myself that I use it to keep up with friends. And it's true that I do sometimes contact my friends on there. But surely a conversation as simple as "what time should I come round yours?" "about 11" "cool" shouldn't take hours to complete. All that I do on Facebook (and I'm sure I'm not alone) is scroll down the homepage skim-reading statuses. Occasionally I see someone who I haven't visited in a while, so I spend twenty minutes looking through their photos and marvelling at how happy they look - presumably happier than I look, staring at the screen.

Why do I do this? I must have something better to do with my time than read other people's thoughts in 140 characters or less, look at photos of people I barely know getting drunk and watch grainy home movies of skateboarding puppies, which is how the majority of my Youtube time is spent. What about all the interesting things I was going to do this summer?

Maybe I need to stop hiding behind my laptop screen and tell people the things I share face-to-face. Mind you, it'll take a long time to tell every one of my facebook friends what I did today. If you need me, I'll be cycling around the area knocking on doors.