My attempts at maintaining a presence on social media – Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest – ebb and flow.  I’m not yet sure how I am supposed to keep up with the 815 people I am “Following” on Twitter.  I only have a sprinkling of people following me on Pinterest, and I seldom go on that site as I’m focusing on Twitter, then Facebook, then Twitter, then Facebook. Last week I decided to put a little money toward building my Facebook “Likes” for Linda Malcolm.  I boosted individual posts: I paid Facebook to let my writing go farther than immediate people who like me.

For one particular post, I shared “The Red-Toed Crab.”  It was a very late night, and I couldn’t sleep.  So thought I would get some work done.  I chose which countries to promote the post.  Normally, I choose the United States and England, for I have readers in both countries.  I remembered I had another reader in Brazil, so for a change, I also selected that country.

Here’s what I posted:

“I'm five years out from the breast cancer diagnosis. MRI's and mammograms are clean. The uncertainty before each result phone call still ebbs and flows. But now, three years beyond the writing of the Red-Toed Crab, the crab is intact.” With a link to The Red-Toed Crab and this picture:

I’m naïve.  Perhaps I thought my words would be translated to Portuguese when that post flew the wires to Brazil.  In the end, approximately 19,000 people in Brazil saw the post; over 250 “liked” the picture.  Six comments were left in Portuguese.  After clicking "translate," I found that five Brazilian women love my sandals and one Brazilian man loves my red toes.

Honest to Pete, my writing self would’ve fit so much better into the 1900’s hard copy style.  Last week, Linda Malcolm failed to thrive on social media.

Today, I find hard copy mighty alluring.