Are We There Yet?

After submitting my first blog Thursday morning, I spent the remainder of the day anticipating two extreme reactions. 

At one end of the spectrum, I was expecting my readers to inundate the boards with the electronic equivalent of a pat on the back and insightful comments about my pearls of wisdom. After all, the masses had been deprived of so much for so long. There was a long standing order for someone like me to satisfy the needs of this neglected demographic. Mind you, I was uncertain about who these suffering people were and how my ramblings would serve as an elixir but heck, I had to man up to my obligation. I also envisioned advertisers rushing at me with blank checks in hand, swaying to the beat of, “Money, money, money money....MONEY!” After all, no one has ever had 50,000+ hits on their first day of publication!

The other side of my vision includes hordes of people waiting in the lobby of my building with pitchforks and torches, cursing and screaming for my demise! My doorman frantically screeching on the intercom, “Mr Rivera, you have visitors!” 

Needless to say, the reality of the response was more like the sound of crickets in the field. Suddenly, it occurred to me; how was I going to show off my newly born blog? I mean, I picked a background, wrote a few well chosen words, made some seemingly smart financial decisions about its future and I even gave it a name! For better or worse, the only thing I could come up with was to show it off to the kids.

Well, Candice’s reaction seemed to be lukewarm. Her first question was, “Yeah, it’s cool but what are you going to write about?” Naturally, I immediately became defensive. After all, besides being beautiful and cool as a cube, she’s smart, insightful and brutally honest. For some strange reason, much of her reputation for honesty and integrity is closely linked to her being such a picky eater. In her special way, she’s always influenced the masses. In college, most of her dorm friends would use her as a barometer to determine whether it was worth coming down to eat or stay studying. The few times she did approve of the menu, word would quickly spread and the dining hall would be filled with Smith girls waiting on line and whispering to one another, “Candice thinks it’s good!” Therefore, you can understand my nervousness, as I straightened up and responded that my blog was about my opinions and observations on a variety of topics that were near and dear to me. She then asked whether my blog was a “How to” or more like a journal. I stammered a few words and couldn’t believe I was being cross examined by my first born in this manner (Mind you, she’s 27 years old and a 3rd year law student). She added, “Journals are too high school.” Of course, I agreed and she seemed satisfied with my responses and she eventually agreed to follow me. She also added that she would send it off to her friend Sophia. In the back of my mind I knew that Sophia would be another, “Baptism by fire” but I wasn’t going to argue with the fact that my audience had suddenly multiplied within the span of a few minutes.  

I was really curious to hear what my son Alex (He’s 24 years old and plays in two bands) had to say because he’s such a terrific writer and because he has such a fertile imagination. He did manage to tell me that he hadn’t read the blog yet but assured me he would do so really soon. This wasn’t the response I was waiting for but the thought that he might make time for me in his busy schedule was enough to keep my hopes afloat.

I then asked Paulette (She’s 20 years old, a junior and business major at BU) for some of her thoughts. She asked me whether it was a tumbler and of course, I had no idea what a tumbler was. Before I could expose my ignorance, she quickly added, “You write well.” I then told her I used Blogger which is a Google structure or affiliate and that I’ve already made $0.01, due to the viewings. She added that she couldn’t believe I would be making money doing this. I later realized that she may have given me a left-handed complement. However, she did soften the blow by agreeing to follow me and said she would pass my blog on to a few of her friends.

I then showed it to my wife Noemi and she said she enjoyed it a great deal. She had wanted to add a comment but was unable to because she had to join Facebook and she refuses to join Facebook. You see, since I first met Noemi, she’s been leading this one woman crusade against Facebook. Her argument has always been that as a society, we no longer have privacy or personal moments because we’re too busy sharing our photos and experiences on Facebook for the world to see and for all of eternity! I agree with her but simply because I can’t envision anyone spending that much time on Facebook to respond, update and lord knows what else. Furthermore, if I really want to know how somebody is doing, I’ll just call, email or text them. Despite the venom being spewed at Facebook by my wife, I can’t help but giggle at the fact that photos of our sacred family gatherings have been splashed across Facebook by Paulette, in recent years (I often refer to her as our in-house paparazzi). Noemi has come home seething because everyone at work had seen pictures of the meals we've served, the decor of our apartment, who has been invited to the gathering and of course, commented on the fact that I am too thin.

Well, besides making a few observations on my observations, as promised, I wanted to share a few links with you (After all, the vision of this blog is to share some of my passions). 

One of the links is to a video feature from the New York Times on the greatest bicycle race in the world, Le Tour de France. Of course, The New York Times is the best at covering "All the news that's fit to print" but they also have a way of covering things you've never even imagined and yet, they do so in an interesting manner. In the past few years, they've been able to transfer this expertise into their videos as well and a Pit Crew For Bikes is a fine example of how good they are at creating videos. The other link is an entertaining piece on the i-phone versus the blackberry. For me, the Smart Phone Showdown raises two important questions: 1) Do the things we own define who we are? 2) Or, do we define the things we own?

I would love to see your comments and reactions. Of course, my hopes are that you enjoy them both as much as I did. 

Take care and be good.