Photo: striatic on Flickr

I am the first to admit I’m into the internet. I have always verged on a little nerdy and somewhat socially awkward in my younger days. I can do face to face, particularly for business, but I’m much more comfortable in my jamies behind a keyboard. I like talking to people, interacting, and learning from people like the ever-so-amazing Gary Vaynerchuk and Social Media guru Chris Brogan. I love knowing what is going on in the world around me, and the internet and today’s technology provides a way to learn and interact with far more people in a day than you ever could in real life.

Oh and by the way, the internet IS real life in 2008. We’re no longer talking to ‘anonymous’.

When I first started working in the marketing department for Grouse Mountain, it was 1999. The state of technology was vastly different than it is now. My favourite memory that makes me laugh, and maybe cry a little, is that we had only a few email accounts and not everyone could have their own. If I wanted to send an email I had to get up and kick the administrator off her computer, sit down and send it. Then I was at her mercy to let me know if I got a response. Funny to think back about it now.

Today, the situation is very different; I’m connected 24/7.

I started diving head-long into social media when I returned to work after my maternity leave in February 2007. I had been a forum junkie since about 2002, spending a huge amount of time in places like karateforums.com, coolrunning.com, weightwatchers.ca, familylife.com and justmommies.com. When I went back to work I was determined to seek out all the best places online in order to figure out who was where and what they were talking about. I signed up to MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn… I now have accounts I don’t even remember creating. I’m pretty much connected to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. all day long and even have to use two different browsers to stay logged in to two Google accounts. I have corporate accounts and personal accounts and the list goes on… and the lines blur…

My newest fascination is WordPress; I wish I hadn’t taken so long to discover it.

I switched this blog to it a couple of months ago and have built a new one now for UrbanShore.ca – my new pet project. I’ve also built one for Whistler Water and have one that I’m building for a friend. I also have a really exciting new wordpress site in the works for Grouse Mountain’s terrain park community that will launch very shortly.

Anyway, all this is to say I sometimes feel like my brain is going to explode. I would hazzard a guess I’m not the only one working with Social Media that is feeling this way, but I think if we’re not careful and place some limits on its use, we could easily integrate it to unhealthy levels. Who knows? Maybe I’m already there.

If social media were the only thing on my plate, maybe I would just get used to it, but it’s just a piece of my duties as a marketer and my life as a human being in 2008. I still have print ads, and signs, and brochures and documents and image requests and TV and videos and websites and planning and strategy to attend to. It’s actually the variety that keeps me loving my job, but it can tax the senses a little. Add to that the personal commitment to blogging outside of work and connecting with friends using social media and I really never leave my computer and mobile.

Such is my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.