When owning a cell phone in high school was a fad, I waited until my sophomore year of college before getting one; when nearly every missionary in my mission had digital cameras, I used a film camera and resisted buying one until I returned home; and after Facebook launched, I finally joined the social network a year or two after most of my peers. And while I bought my first iPod this last August, I've tried to avoid blogging like the plague. However, like most things, I've finally succumbed.
It isn't due to any ideological problems I have with technology or progress, nor even my unwillingness to change (because in all of these cases I have!). It is more likely my desire to test and contemplate. Then test some more. I don't like rushing into decisions that I don't have to. Perhaps these things seem mundane (and indeed they are), but that is who I am.
During a marketing class I took at BYU our professor showed a graph of society's acceptance rate of products. While I have forgotten all of the names for this graph's segments of society, I roughly remember what the segments represented. The first group always buys what's new because . . . well, it's new! (these are the people who go to store openings at midnight to buy untested products. They make up about 5% of the population). The second group buys innovative toys early in the production stage based off of strong recommendations from friends who've used the product (roughly 35-45% of the population). Then there's my group; we wait until a product has been tried and tested and become accepted. We make our decision based off of friends who use the product successfully, and our own probing (we also make up about 35-45% of the population). The last group consists of the diehards. These are the people who won't quit using VHS or cassette tapes (even when it is more difficult to resist the current. They also make up about 5% of the population). It all forms a very nice bell curve.
I came to blogging slowly. I thought . . . Why do I want everyone to know my thoughts? Where will I find the time? And, couldn't my wife do it? Well, as time passed I thought some more. During my short time in Alaska I realized the hard time I would have communicating with all of the friends I've made. A blog would allow me to say something essentially one time that they could all read on their own schedule. Besides, while it is time consuming, there are positive benefits. For instance, the time I take formalizing my thoughts helps me put my life into perspective. And, since I'm not married, nor does it look like it will happen anytime soon, I should probably stop procrastinating.
Well, as part of my preparation before deploying to Afghanistan from Alaska, I opened a blogging account. I don't know how many Jim Rhoden's are out there, but while I was debating about the merits of blogging I wasn't going to let someone steal my spot! Again, I waited for another 5 months before posting my first blog entry. (To be honest, not having an Internet connection in Afghanistan probably had more to do with my slow start.) Due to limited bandwidth, this blog won't have many of the pictures, cool sounds, or YouTube clips that many other blogs have. I'll have to make due with what I have. But, now that I've done my necessary testing and prodding, I'm ready to dive into the blogging world!!!
It isn't due to any ideological problems I have with technology or progress, nor even my unwillingness to change (because in all of these cases I have!). It is more likely my desire to test and contemplate. Then test some more. I don't like rushing into decisions that I don't have to. Perhaps these things seem mundane (and indeed they are), but that is who I am.
During a marketing class I took at BYU our professor showed a graph of society's acceptance rate of products. While I have forgotten all of the names for this graph's segments of society, I roughly remember what the segments represented. The first group always buys what's new because . . . well, it's new! (these are the people who go to store openings at midnight to buy untested products. They make up about 5% of the population). The second group buys innovative toys early in the production stage based off of strong recommendations from friends who've used the product (roughly 35-45% of the population). Then there's my group; we wait until a product has been tried and tested and become accepted. We make our decision based off of friends who use the product successfully, and our own probing (we also make up about 35-45% of the population). The last group consists of the diehards. These are the people who won't quit using VHS or cassette tapes (even when it is more difficult to resist the current. They also make up about 5% of the population). It all forms a very nice bell curve.
I came to blogging slowly. I thought . . . Why do I want everyone to know my thoughts? Where will I find the time? And, couldn't my wife do it? Well, as time passed I thought some more. During my short time in Alaska I realized the hard time I would have communicating with all of the friends I've made. A blog would allow me to say something essentially one time that they could all read on their own schedule. Besides, while it is time consuming, there are positive benefits. For instance, the time I take formalizing my thoughts helps me put my life into perspective. And, since I'm not married, nor does it look like it will happen anytime soon, I should probably stop procrastinating.
Well, as part of my preparation before deploying to Afghanistan from Alaska, I opened a blogging account. I don't know how many Jim Rhoden's are out there, but while I was debating about the merits of blogging I wasn't going to let someone steal my spot! Again, I waited for another 5 months before posting my first blog entry. (To be honest, not having an Internet connection in Afghanistan probably had more to do with my slow start.) Due to limited bandwidth, this blog won't have many of the pictures, cool sounds, or YouTube clips that many other blogs have. I'll have to make due with what I have. But, now that I've done my necessary testing and prodding, I'm ready to dive into the blogging world!!!
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