Back in 1997 or so, I registered my first domain name for the bargain price of just under £90.

My new friends from across the pond (when they’d finished laughing) told me where I could buy a domain for a lot less. I listened attentively, acutely aware that I had messed up.

I clicked through to their recommendation and breathed a sigh of relief. This site was absolute rubbish!!!! It looked put together by a circus clown who was no doubt preparing to run off with all the registration money.

Joyously, I went back to my original registrar and basked in the glory of his professional, tidy and sedate website before putting down a couple more £90’s for a couple more domains.

In my circle of friends, I was the first to go online, the first to break the pain barrier of learning HTML and the workings of the internet. I was a pioneer wasn’t I? I should be getting recognition for this, not criticism.

My sensitivity to an alternate viewpoint helped me stay doggedly assured that I had paid a fair price. So when I went to look at the cheaper site, my mind-set was already set to sabotage any rational decision-making. I was looking for faults. I was on the hunt for an excuse that would let me justify the price I had paid . The cosmetic ugliness assaulting my eyes was enough justification and I never really gave the content a chance.

I recognised this same pattern in a client who came to see me last year. He was in desperate need and kept telling me I was “his last chance”. But at every session I could see him looking for reasons to leave. He was critical of the process, making payment and of me.

Although his issue was significantly more troublesome than an expensive domain, the similarities were there.

• The problem: He was ill. I had an expensive domain.
• The goal: He’d been told coaching would make the pain go away. I’d been told I could get a cheaper domain.
• The sensitivity: He wanted recognition for surviving his life thus far. I wanted recognition for learning about the internet.
• The result: He held on to the expensive behaviours that he’d “earned” through pain. Same as me.

From time to time, we all make decisions that don’t really help our cause. That’s not a problem because that’s just human nature.

Continuing to stick to a course of action when you have recognised a poor decision is a problem.

You don’t have to go backwards trying to find the same fork in the road to re-do that decision. As soon as you recognise a poor decision, evaluate your opportunities/choices/options as they stand right now (not back then) and change course starting from today.

In case you’re wondering, I was wiser by the time renewal time came round and found 123-reg.co.uk for my domain registrations.

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Photo credit: sue r b
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Emotional well-being gives you backup when things get difficult. You let old niggles go, you fester less, have better perspective and you start making stronger decisions.

Long-term exposure to dark emotions like stress, anger and resentment can make us ill, so doing something little every day that helps chip away at these feelings is as important as eating and sleeping.

As a reader of Paradox of Reality, I’d love to know what you do and their pros and cons. Do some methods work better than others? Please leave a comment below.

(poll now closed)

Having dipped a toe into social media, I’m finding it’s a whirlpool sucking me in.

I’m a techie and I’m also pro-privacy. So while I’m hooked by the technology, I worry about where all this is leading. Is social media immunising us against privacy concerns? Perhaps even numbing our resistance to increasing levels of government paranoia-mongering?

Staying aware

The Big Brother connotations have been around for a while now. They were there in the early days, circa 1995, when online interactivity consisted mainly of independent silos – Usenet, forums and Inter-Relay Chat (IRC) applications.

Now, the silos are broken down and you can Stumble a bookmark to your Twitpic photo which then gets fed to Twitter which then sends it on to Friendfeed which sends it to your Blog which displays it on Facebook…

Also, as people tend to use their real names, employers, disgruntled ex-partners and the police can easily track what you’re up to.  Then there’s dodgy activities from third party applications sneaking in to steal your data. Not to forget the Internet Archive that stores everything for posterity.

Internet best practices add a layer of cushioning. Hide your date of birth & email address, make liberal use of privacy options and choose an obscure email password reminder question – not your maiden name etc. And obviously, if you hate your job, don’t twitter about it!

Today’s social media carries a seductive illusion of control – sometimes I think it must really be 30% proof because some of the stuff on twitter surely can’t have been posted while the sender was sober.

Despite knowing this (and probably being guilty myself of one or two “what-was-i-thinking” posts), I’m happily going for a swim in this whirlpool…

Knowing what you want

Social media is a real time-sink so knowing what you want from it becomes a way of helping keep you on the straight and narrow.

Some people want to simply keep in touch with friends and family, to post photos and exchange some easy conversation. Others want to expand the reach of their business network.

My goals are:

1. Keep in touch with friends and family
2. Keep abreast of changing technology – I’m an ex-techie now working alone in a non-techie field so linking up with techies online helps me out a lot
3. Learn from people – get information, hints and tips on subjects I care about
4. Get the word out when I post a new blog

Knowing what my goals are helps me to identify the most appropriate social networks for my needs. Bungling up is all part of the game as I found out when I posted information about depression to my personal facebook page, leaving my friends and family wondering what I was on…

Linking up the Network

Up until a few days ago, my social media activities were more or less independent of each other and I was only active on a couple. I’m still only active on a couple but I’ve connected them up to make things a bit more streamlined. I’m already getting messages on one network initiated by something I posted on another.

Here is what my social media network looks like now – you’re welcome to click through & connect…

• Twitter – This is my current favourite. My tweets feed through to ecademy and friendfeed.
• *Facebook personal page – My links and notes feed through to friendfeed. It imports from *NetworkedBlogs.
• *Facebook fanpage – This feeds through to my Facebook personal page and facebook newsfeeds of those who are subscribed. It also imports from NetworkedBlogs.
• *Facebook group – I’ve kept this standalone for two reasons: 1) It’s had no activity for ages and 2) facebook doesn’t let groups connect to anywhere else!
• Friendfeed – This is my newest network. It feeds through to Twitter, the Paradox of Reality website and ecademy.  It imports from NetworkedBlogs, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Facebook personal page, LinkedIn and the Paradox of Reality Blog.
• Ecademy- This imports from friendfeed, Twitter and the Paradox of Reality Blog.
• LinkedIn – This feeds through to friendfeed and imports from the Paradox of Reality Blog
• Paradox of Reality Blog – Although a blog is not a true network, it still falls under the social media banner. This feeds through to NetworkedBlogs, friendfeed, ecademy and LinkedIn.

Linking the networks together means that my goals become easier to manage. Friendfeed especially is a nice hub allowing people to take advantage of features from various sites in one place. I’m deliberately not feeding twitter to facebook because I haven’t found a way to feed it to just my facebook “fanpage”. It seems it has to go to the personal page too which is something that is not suitable for me – friends & family wouldn’t want to hear my twitters.

Each social network has a different flavour that impacts how you interact on it.  Twitter is a constant stream of real-time information from people you’ve actively added in order to read what they have to say. I get a lot of useful information from there. LinkedIn is a lot more formal.

Linking networks makes online social activity easier and efficient for those who are using it to exchange ideas with new people. But if you’re also using social media for personal socialising and are thinking of linking networks, it’s worth double-checking your privacy controls and setting your own rules on what is visible to people you’ve just met.

*Update December 2009 – I deleted my facebook account because it was no longer helping me with my goals.

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Photo Credit: SpoonGraphics
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