How Tumblr Changed My Life - alternrg
by alternrg
Tumblr is more than I ever imagined it would be in part due to a lack of awareness for these instantaneous distance barrier breaking tools. I don’t remember who finally convinced me to start a Facebook account but was late to the party, my MO. Unless I discover a bit of humor in the mundane, I’m more apt to call my friends there rather than post it on the wall but in thinking about it, there is a time component to these tools. If Facebook is the place to share what we did, and Twitter to share what we are doing, Tumblr is both of those while providing the space, big operative word there SPACE to work through what we are going to do. How many times have we been told to write down our goals for success, the more specific the better? I’ve done so and managed to follow through on some of the commitments I’ve made to myself on paper but for some reason, exposing visions on Tumblr provides greater return on those thoughts. Maybe it’s the combination of media or being connected to people who are similarly crazy but since being drawn to this vortex and it is a vortex, I’ve pushed my own boundaries that much more. In addition to a refined sense of motivation, being exposed and participating in topically focused conversation has filled a void that has existed since completing those first graduate level seminar courses in college. Now I see endless opportunity to participate in developing media that fosters these types of bonds between thinking people.
So that’s what Tumblr has become and I have John Mayer’s irresistible invitation at the end of April of 2010 to honor for it. Just weeks before, I was standing in the front row at the winter tour closer conversing with a young man who made the suggestion quite loudly to follow John’s tweets. I had read a couple of them already in attempt to figure out what the heck it was for but played along as though I wouldn’t even consider going down that road and responded at an equally audible decibel. Within 48 hours I forwarded an event proposal to John’s management outlining a benefit for water awareness at Millennium Park and I’m getting closer to making this happen I can feel it. Before that show, I had never considered doing anything like what I’ve described but something happened that night and Tumblr has been the perfect venue for documenting the residual effect of inspiration. Beyond this focus, there’s a recurring theme in the conversation attempting to address the benefit of physical distance at the onset of a new relationship, in this case to document concurrent thoughts of which have a dedicated tag. I’m not sure how many occurrences are required to substantiate the possibility that our thoughts really do matter but the opportunity would not exist as far as I can see if it weren’t for the imagination and endeavor of Tumblr staff.
Worth sharing is that I reserved the domain ametalovestory.com and just haven’t decided when to migrate from the Tumblr url. alternrg I dreamt up years ago and thought it was perfect until I googled it around six months after starting this account to find that it’s the name of a company. If you would like to use this project for storyboard and require that the name be changed, I have ametalovestory.tumblr.com as well. In any case, I think it would be cool for alternrg (the company) to use Tumblr for explaining their technology in small doses to the scientifically curious. Turning waste into energy. Did you ever think that would happen in our lifetime?
