The first time my husband and I took a long road trip, we were still in college and he was just my boyfriend. Somewhere between New York and Texas, I shared with him my deepest fear: what if we run out of things to talk about?
Jump forward four kids and 28 years later, we found ourselves on another long road trip, just the two of us. We had a 17 hour grind in the minivan from Iowa to Pennsylvania to watch our oldest run a 20 minute race. (You might question the logic but trust me, it was worth it.) We have yet to run out of things to talk about, possibly because our listening skills aren’t the sharpest.
I had been looking for a way to transform my Facebook feed into a permanent record for well over a year. I had recovered my data and it sat on my hard drive like a big pile of…..data. My history was safeguarded but useless. I asked my son who was one AP computer science course-deep into his career to spend some time with the data set. He wrote some rudimentary code that confirmed my vision was possible but I was going to need someone with a longer attention span and stronger desire not to disappoint me.
I can’t remember how it came up, but somewhere in Indiana I mentioned my Facebook “project.” Jeff looked puzzled and asked “What Facebook project?” I stared at him in disbelief. Surely this was the least secret secret I had ever kept. I brought him up to speed and for the better part of the next two states, Jeff mulled it over.
After our 17 hour journey home (with a van full of NCAA national championship bling), Jeff had a plan to build what I envisioned. I had looked everywhere for someone to print my social media history. Turns out, I was married to him the whole time.
After many long nights of coding, trial and error, patient acceptance of my opinionated feedback about the outputs, Jeff did indeed build my vision. And it is amazing. And now it can be amazing for anyone that values their social media history.
Flipping through my 15 year history on Facebook, it’s no wonder we haven’t run out of things to talk about. Go get yours so you give your kids something to talk about too.