Are You On Facebook?

I arrived at the office around 8:30AM and started to get ready for a 9:00AM meeting. I was gathering my essential items for the meeting when I discovered, much to my dismay, that I had forgotten my cell phone at the hotel. “I can pick it up after the meeting. No big deal!” I told myself. However, five minutes later, I started experiencing a sense of emptiness.  The feeling got stronger as every minute passed and it felt as if I had left something much more important as my pants, my arm, my leg or even my head. I didn’t have time to go get it since the meeting was about to start, but I found myself thinking over and over again that maybe, I could run the twelve blocks to the hotel, get the phone and run the twelve blocks back in the five minutes I still had before the meeting started. "Yeah right!" Once I sat in the meeting room, I tried to console myself with the assertions that I did grew up during the eighties. No one had cell phones then; I did not even know what a cell phone was back then! Therefore, if I did not need it then, why did I need it now? I could certainly do without my phone for an hour or so.

I assumed that once the presenter started the meeting, I would forget about the phone and I could concentrate on the discussion. How wrong I was. While the presenter went from one slide to the next, my subconscious started pushing all sort of scenarios on my head: “Maybe I forgot the phone at the coffee shop. What if the housekeeping woman takes the phone? Maybe I dropped it.” By now all I could hear from the presenter was “Blah, Blah, Blah” I could not make sense of what he was saying, I was biting my nails, and I started to sweat. Now, in case you are wondering, it was not only the phone what I was missing. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past ten years I am sure you already know how Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard dropout, created Social Media’s top jewel: Facebook. So about two weeks ago, after years of insistence from close friends, I decided to join Facebook. Since I have an android, the next step was to link my Facebook account with my phone.  During my first week on Facebook I ran into old friends I had not seen or talk to in 10, 20, and even 30 years. Childhood friends who at first I even struggled remembering where contacting me. My experience was so fulfilling during that first week that I overdid it, as I usually do. Therefore, by the following week I had decided to expand my Social Media experience by joining other services. Now, the man who would even refuse to talk about Facebook two weeks ago, has actually joined Klout, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Digg, Redditt, Flickr!, you name it!! Each of these accounts, synchronized and channeled directly to my phone for 24/7 coverage. I have become a Social Media addict.

I was relieved when the meeting ended and I was on my way to the elevators when my project partner interrupted me. “What do you want!” I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue and candidly heard how he wanted me to review another presentation. I was listening to his “Blah, Blah, Blah” while moving side by side due to my secret desperation. I think he assumed I needed to get to the bathroom, or that I might have ADD, since he let me go. Then, I just ran. I ran to the elevator, outside the building, and on my way to the hotel. The elevator ride from the hotel lobby to my room floor was the longest ever. There was a couple in the elevator that kept looking at me as if I was going mad. 

Once the elevator doors opened, I ran towards my room. It took me five desperate tries to get the door opened and once in the room, I started looking everywhere for my cell phone. I could not find it anywhere. Then, as I was about to turn the room upside down, from the corner of my eye I notice the red blinking light. The phone was right in the corner of my hotel room desk, and the blinking light signaled the battery running out or that I had received new messages. I knew better. I had charged the phone the night before so it could only mean that I had new messages. I grabbed my phone with my right hand as I slide on my knees.  Immediately I turned my screen phone on and there to my surprise I saw it: 11 Facebook messages, 29 Tweets, 13 Klouts, 2 diggs, 15 yahoo mails, 9 g-mails, 5 Stumbles, and 1 reddit. Then, as I extended my arms and looked above, I yelled at the top of my lungs and for the World to hear: “Damn you Mark Zuckerberg!”