Man Against The World

It seems like just when you've mastered (or think you've mastered) one concept in life or piece of technology, someone else ups the ante and comes up with something else for you to worry about.

Take for instance, blogging. OK, so I've had a blog elsewhere for a couple of years; not like I ever wrote much to it, but it was there... waiting for me... to get finished with nursing school, I suppose.

Now comes Myspace.com. OK, so it's owned by a big corporate mogul... why should that bother me? I'm supposedly a conservative Republican, and big corporations should be right up my alley, right? For a Philly-minded conservative Republican, I hope my fellow Republicans (all except for Arlen Specter, of course) would forgive me for being a bit "California liberal" on this big corporate culture point... even though it was the California liberal "dot-com" culture that ultimately caused the demise of my really excellent job in IT, which caused me to fall back on what I wanted to do over 20 years ago -- RN nursing... but I digress.

The "Myspace.com" culture is so pervasive at my school right now, I hear kids through the hall talking about their Myspace pages this and their Myspace pages that. All this culmiated one day a week ago when someone asked me for my "Myspace" address... and when I balked, this person was all like, "Oh my GAWD... why don't you have a Myspace page?"

To which I replied, in typical not-thinking-before-speaking Dilbert's New Ruling Class definition of "inDUHvidual" style, "Oh, well I just never got into all that Facebook thing much."

To which this person whacked back, "But it's not 'FaceBook', it's Myspace."

Now you have to realise one thing... I am a 40-something, going BACK to school to earn a degree BELOW one I already hold, amongst an overwhelming crowd of people who most likely just graduated from high school, still live with Mommy & Daddy (or some modern adaptation of that), probably having Mom/Dad/Grams/Etc. paying their way through college, and don't have to work unless they want to have some hand money for, say, unlimited text messaging on their Razr phone... or the latest Kanye West download for their 920 GB iPod... or more drugs to help them through school.

So, when these "kids" (that's the only way I can describe some of them) tell me about why don't I have a "Myspace" page, what do I do? Get online and sign up for one, that's what I do... not to be outdone by my juniors who no doubt will end up making more money in nursing then I ever will by virtue of the fact that they'll probably be still working when I'm dead (unless they die first of say, smoking... or drugs... or listening to Kanye West downloads).

So, putting this thing together with all the other stuff I have to do, like going to school and WORKING to provide for an actual family, I am finding just enough time to breathe, let alone to pimp out my new-found "Myspace" page, sold-out as the whole thing already is to the big-NewsCorp culture. If I had decided to take my Bachelor's degree literally, I'd probably be solidly in the Murdoch camp, probably running around embedded in some US or British platoon in the middle of Iraq if I wasn't already a weekend anchor for some TV news outlet.

It all feels like a "man against the world" type of thing... those of you old enough to remember, will recall the song from the band Survivor (which incidentally, I was listening to before 'Til Tuesday). Just when you've one thing down, something else rears its head. I just recently mastered the art of logging online to my nursing school textbook's website to download chapter content so I don't have to lug the GD 812-pound tome around school, and here comes this kid wondering why I don't have a MYSPACE PAGE!?

OK, so here I am... and hopefully between the gasping breaths I take between lecture, lab, clinical, work, work, work, soccer practice, work, soccer game, work, synagogue, church, work... I'll have time to keep things like this up... because I surely don't want to upset the 19-year-old who is no doubt scouring Myspace for my page.

- NursingGuy