I deleted my photo from the Facebook credit union photo contest. After five days, it had 50 points, and 20 of them were from me. If I learned anything, it is that most of my Facebook friends are friends only in the loosest possible meaning of the word. I know that may sound harsh, but I had hoped for a bit more. I had hoped to have more than 50 points by now. I'll be honest; I probably (OK, definitely) set my expectations much too high, but it has disappointed me much more than I thought it would. I feel fundamentally rejected, and that is not the way I should feel. So rather than torture myself further...and to avoid looking at the garish HDR photo of Timp that is leading right now (the colours are really unnatural in my opinion)...I removed mine from the popularity contest. I may have over 100 'friends' on Facebook, but I don't seem to have many real friends there.
This is not a very good evening for me. I feel a lot of frustration and disappointment, and other than the stupid photo thing, I don't know why. I have one more day of work before the weekend, and right now the thought of eight more hours dealing with rude people on the phone really makes me want to crawl in a hole. I keep wondering what I am supposed to be learning from the whole situation, and I can't put a finger on anything. I am normally a very compassionate guy, but being treated like something stuck to the bottom of their shoe by people on a daily basis really wears on you. At least it wears on me. Some people can just let it go, but I don't know how to harden myself against it, and I am pretty sure I don't want to become that kind of a person. I know that this is mostly just 'one of those days' and things will not always be this way, but right now I have had just about as much as I can take, but I am certain I will take more because it is my job and I have to have an income.
Now that I have had my little whine-fest, I'm going to go for tonight. It's for the best.
2 comments:
I'm sad you took your photo out of the contest.
Looks like I failed the test of friendship. When you sent me a FB friend request and I confirmed the connection I left a silly message for you on your wall. I noticed that you wanted votes for a photo and I clicked on the link to vote. Up came a screen wanting access to all my information before I could go on and vote. I usually shy away from signing up for things that grant free access to my personal info, so I made a mental note to look for another way in to vote the following day. Come morning, no memory retrieval. I didn't hear back from youand I never received any FB notices about your other wall posts, which I see several of as I'm snooping again now, and I just plain forgot. I'm sorry. Your words are pretty harsh, it's true. I'm sorry you're disappointed about the contest and in your friends.
I don't know about you but I find the only halfway reliable way to communicate something important with my FB friends us to send a message directly to them, even if it's en masse. Otherwise, posts get missed by some of the people some of the time, a few of the people all of the time, etc., etc. There are people I never see posts from now who used to show up regularly in my news feed, even after I try and specify that yes, I do want to see more posts from this person, and I don't know why. In the last two and a half months a girlfriend of mine, someone I have had fairly regular contact with, lost not one but TWO of her sisters, and I only just found out because FB didn't shoe me those posts, and general wall posts were the only kind Pam sent out. I feel horrible about it, but how was I to know? I figure on randomness now when dealing with FB, particularly since I am not steadily on; sometimes I go for stretches when I can't give it my time and at other periods it's a decent communication tool. But I know now that if I post something not everyone will see it. Occasionally even direct messages get overlooked in inboxes. Its happened to me, incoming and outgoing both.
Sorry this is such a long comment. I'm not trying to talk you out of feeling what you feel--maybe I really am a crap friend. But maybe next time you enter a contest it would help to send out a personal message to your FB connections. I bet you'd drum up lots more business. I hope you try again. Can you re-enter your photo for this one? Might be worth a shot with a slightly more specific approach. Of course, there still may be boneheads like me who forget but you can't do much with people like that. ; )
I'm sorry to know you're hating your job. I hope things start feeling better soon. Love you, Scott.
Thanks Georgia. Believe me, I was in no way talking about you. In fact, you are one of the good friends.
It was a frustrating day and night yesterday and everything kind of just reached the boiling point. I lashed out a bit, but it was aimed squarely at those people who seemed so anxious to invite me (people I knew in high school) to be friends, but really have no strong connection with me anymore. It was a perfect storm situation and I let something silly and unimportant get to me. I knew going in that the contest amounted to little more that a popularity contest and a way for MACU to get more people to advertise to on Facebook.
In retrospect, I realize it was a bit much to ask people to have to 'Like' MACU in order to vote for me. I'll look for more legitimate ways to expose my photography in the future.
As for the job, well, there are days and then there are days, and yesterday was one of them, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, I know who my real friends are and I count you among them. Thanks for your concern and kind words, and I really enjoy your posts.
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