With the New Year coming around the corner, many people make resolutions and promises for a better year. I don’t make these sort of promises to myself because I will not  keep  them. What I do use this time of year  is to look at where my time is being spent and what kind of connections I have. My very purpose of keeping a Social Media presence is to connect to with people I otherwise would not and to keep the connections I have fresh and alive.

To take this on a personal Christian level, I use Matthew 7:6 as a guide for my time “Caste not your pearl before the swine”. What does this mean?  I cull my connection lists to what  I find to be more meaningful. I know many people take on Twitter as a popularity contest and then use such services as Tweetdeck to tone down the noise of people they do not  want hear. I do not  have time for that. I take this time of year to evaluate what it is I want to hear.  I also need to know that people are listening to what I have to say and that not taking it for granted or advantage of it. This is a great time to  evaluate who is and who should not be my personal space. While I don’t pretend to think the internet is private, I do treat it like I would my home. I don’t have to invite people who I don’t want there.

I also go  through my memberships of forums I belong to. Am I getting out of them what I am putting into them? I had to learn the hard way that my time is limited just like everyone else and I can not give more than I receive. We are all looking for a connection, that is why we  have cultivated these tiny machines. We have social networks at our very finger tips, I feel that this is a  good  time to evaluate if we are connected to something  meaningful to our purpose in life.  I need those connections that challenge and push me further than I went last year, further than I want to go and further than I thought I ever could go.  I need to eliminate the connections that suck up my time and leave me drained. I am better able to give encouragement to the people who need it when I am not watching my pearls being trampled by swine.

I love New Years. No resolutions, just reconnecting with the possibilities that brought me to mobile in the first place.