Lean Out

Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:55am, 5 minutes before I’d set my alarm to go off.  I stealthily got dressed, got an exemplary free parking spot near the train station… And then proceeded to board a slow train to nowhere.  Technically it was a slow train to the city… But at 5:55am, I think nowhere is more than generous.

I meant to get on the Baby Bullet, but the lady I asked, who looked in-the-know, was technically on her way to her third day on the job as an Assistant Something-er-Other at a Palo Alto Peet’s and was even more perturbed about our train mistake.

So I get on the train and I read an e-mail from my Dad about needing help to find and identify Happy Valleyans from my elementary school so he can invite them to the school’s sesquicentennial celebration.  I don’t know how long that is, but I’m sure Google does.

I’d already checked LinkedIn and found exactly .036% of my sixth grade class (is this telling me something?) and so I told him I thought the only way was via Facebook.

Mind you, I know nothing about Facebook.  Except something about Liking and Poking and it being a huge time suck.  Yet, in my stupor of finding 82 minutes to kill on a northbound train before a long weekend, I made a rash decision to sign-up for Facebook with the sole objective of poking around (seriously, no pun intended) so as to coach my dad on the wonders of social networking.  I saw that movie with JT so I can totally figure this out.

Plus, I’m on my way to see Sheryl Sandberg at the Professional Business Women of California’s conference.  She’s the author of a new book called Lean In and is also the headline act.  And given she’s the COO of this whole thing I’ve been avoiding for umpteen years, it seems fitting that I would sign-up that morning, right?

And then I went back to my e-mail and found no less than 8 e-mails from Facebook in the time it takes to go from Lawrence to Sunnyvale.

Update 1: I started this blog yesterday morning on the train and then took a break to listen to inspirational speakers and hopefully learn something.  Total count of Facebook e-mails I’d deleted by 4pm: 20.

I told one of the gals on my team and she was very proud of me for joining the 21st century.  James found out about my momentary lapse in judgement via some Facebook feature and sent me a text about how disappointed he was that I’d been a hold-out for so long and had finally caved.  Nice.  He says Facebook is over.  That’s exactly when I like to adopt new technology.

Update 2: I’ve been a member of The Facebook for just over 24 hours and my tally of deleted e-mails is up to 29.  I like to add the “The” like Larry King.  Bump it, Lare-dawg.  Looking forward to your 80th birthday this fall!

All this e-mail maintenance has me leaning out.  Way out.