This summer has been tight.

We’ve had to spend a lot of money, and we have little coming in. Mr. C’s trip to Italy will be paid for by the university, but not until after he returns in late July. We’ve had to stock up on diapers again, and duds for the little guy who’s due to arrive on Aug. 11.

We had a wedding shower and two weddings for which we had to send gifts. Gas is $4.09 a gallon. Preschool tuition deposit, to the tune of $210, is due by the end of August.

Let’s not even discuss how much insulin, diabetes testing supplies and OB bills are.

I’ve been trying to work work work, but with the anemia and the three-year-old and the general aches and pains, it’s been a tough road.

So Thursday, when my fair friends and steady employers at TravelMuse asked me to come on board as a social-media ambassador/consultant, I was more than thrilled.

The pay will be much appreciated, and at four hours a week, the task is more than do-able - even while I recover from my c-section and enter the tunnel of newborn sleep deprivation.

The best part?

I get to be an evangelist for what I love - blogging and social media.

I’ll be posting over at the TravelMuse blog, and some of you may have noticed that I’m following you on Twitter twice - once as my own self, and once as travelmusings.

Sure, I want to spread the word about TravelMuse. Selfishly, I want y’all to go over there and read my column when it comes out on Fridays.

I also want people to see the new site, which got great reviews on big tech sites like Mashable. It really is a cool concept, and it is much friendlier and more fun to use than your basic travel-booking website.

More than that, though, I get to participate in this revolution.

Because, friends, we are rebels.

We are shattering the traditional paradigms of publishing and giving rise to a new social order. Voices that would never have been heard - mine among them - are suddenly echoing all over the Interwebs.

Voices with important things to say. Voices with humor. Tender voices.

Even voices with rancor.

But voices raised in a collective shout: a shout that defies the old guard of gatekeepers who were once the only artbiters of what should or should not be read.

Author and media critic Andrew Keen says this revolution is dumbing down discourse and allowing a gaggle of non-artists to take over what was once the exclusive realm of a lucky few who were able to get their manuscript, screenplay, TV pilot, personal essay, opinion piece, etc. in the hands of the right person on the right day.

He says we are destroying cultural arts.

Me?

I thumb my nose at him.

I challenge Mr. Keen to use 140 characters on Twitter to compose a witty aside. As a writing challenge, there is none greater.

I challenge Mr. Keen to create a movement that brings hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds and viewpoints together.

I challenge Mr. Keen to harness the power of blogging and social media to elect a president whose nomination alone will go down in history.

So when my friends and employers asked me to show them the way in this Brave New World, I said, yes, please.

Because there is nothing I’d like more than to spread this new religion, one in which the individual is empowered to use nothing more than a laptop, an Internet connection and the sheer power of their words and intellect to make a difference - or to make a success.

I’d like to be one of those success stories.

And I’d like to say the same for you, too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 5th, 2008 at 12:32 pm and is filed under daily, meta, thinky minky, writing life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.