How Many Years (BV)

Introduction

Last night I was replying to a lot of positive comments on some of my Vocal Facebook posts, almost all very positive and then had a flashback to my reasons for being around on Facebook before I joined Vocal and found the various Facebook Vocal groups and thought I would just set down my experiences and share them with you. I don’t know if this will tell you anything new about me or give you any ideas, but if it does then I have succeeded and if it doesn’t then hopefully I have not wasted your time with this.

Before Vocal On Facebook And Just Before Vocal For Me

Social media has grown incredibly since before the millennium and I tried to do various web pages, most of which ended up being forgotten even by me. I don’t know if those early traces of me are still around and I am not too bothered as there is nothing too incriminating. A friend of mine started a blog and it stopped after two excellent posts and I do see that in so many places io social media where people seem to get bored very quickly.

I know life gets in the way but the internet is littered with abandoned pages which is a bit sad, but if these pages were still maintained would it be any better or would there just be so much more clutter to wade through?

Around 2007 I started Seven Days In as a travel blog after a visit to Ireland, but although I did vaguely travel-related posts I then started including music and now it has become a sort of diary about the books that I am reading plus any other observations I may want to make. In my first year I posted six pieces the first of which you can read here and see how short my posts were then and my most prolific year was 2019 with 368 posts which you can sample here if you would like.

Around the same time, another friend invited me to join Facebook. I wasn’t so sure about it but got into it and found I could share titbits, chat with friends who I connected with on there and also reconnected with some old friends and avoided old enemies. Facebook was an improved version of Friends ReUnited which eventually lost its way (I don’t know if it is still going)

I then tried a few of the Facebook games and remember “Mafia Wars” and through that made a lot of new friends, I don’t know if they are the ones that I can’t remember how we became friends.

That game and many others became too much for me and eventually left it and then took up Scrabble (which I still love as a physical board game) and made a few new friends with that, but eventually, it became very resource hungry to the point that it didn’t work, then I tried Words With Friends and that became an advert avalanche so I left both of those, but am still friends with those that I played with.

I now play Wordle and Weaver and share my results with some Vocal friends and that is enough online word games for me.

All this time I was using Facebook to share Seven Days In and in fifteen years I have six subscribers, twenty comments and made about sixty dollars on two and a half thousand posts. Hardly a success story although it has had over eight hundred thousand page views,

Then Came Vocal.

In April 2021 I was tempted on to Vocal by their lucrative challenges and have been with Vocal ever since. I have gained so many great friends and become very close to many creators, but have seen a lot disappear from Vocal and Facebook and every day I think about them and miss them so much, but I do not pursue them because I believe if they want to talk to me they will contact me, but social media can be such a difficult place for some.

For me, Vocal has been a huge benefit but it may not be the right thing for everyone. If you check my profile there are lots of pieces on Vocal that you might find interesting or useful.

Conclusion

I am grateful for all my friends that are there for me and I try to be there for them.

The music I have included is "She Hits Me" by The Four Of Us because it is a beautiful song and joining up with the Vocal Facebook groups has hit me in so many ways.

Thank you for reading.