The world out there

I'm sure I sound like an old fuddy-duddy when I say this, but I marvel at how rapidly the information and marketing worlds have changed in the last few years.

My younger son wants to spend all his time on Club Penguin and Poptropica—virtual worlds for the under 10 set.

My wife, who could barely turn on the computer two years ago, is a FaceBook addict, connecting and posting and embedding videos of a dog rescuing another dog in the street.

My new job search is aided and abetted by not just job boards, but meta-search sites that can look across multiple boards and bring everything (well, not EVERYTHING) to me tied up in a little bow. Similarly, I no longer need to search Orbitz and Travelocity and Yahoo Travel for the lowest rates...a site like Kayak will look across multiple sites.

Today, it's Twitter and Facebook and YouTube. A year from now, those individual sites will probably be replaced by aggregators that bring all of your content on one screen, unpdated constantly.

Daunting yet exhilarating.

It's like Duran Duran...Bora Bora...or the dik-dik

"Second verse, same as the first."

For the second time in less than a year, I've gotten laid off. And the story is uncannily similar: agency loses a major client and "hard choices had to be made." Nobody feels good about it, but, well, there it is.

The whole thing is bookended. Last time, it was about a month before my kids and wife had to go back to school. This time, it's about a month from when they get out of school for the summer.

One big difference is my perspective on it. I'm motivated, but not frantic. And, as soon as I say that, I know that I should've gone back and read my blog posts from August/September. Because although I may've been trying to maintain a brave face back then, I wasn't feeling it.

We'll see what happens this time.