rant from in bed with the laptop
I’m kind of under the weather so this blog is going to sound harsher than normal. I have the flu and at last check a fever of 101. Yeah me.
Even though my chosen line of work requires me to interact with the World Wide Web, I am always very hesitant online
social networking and the like. Hell, the only reason I have a myspace account was that my wife created it. The only reason that I got on LiveJournal was that it felt the only way to keep up with the people I consider my friends, because I don’t lock myself into bi-hourly checks of my email to get event announcements.
As I said above, I come with caution and hesitancy to things like MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal and mediums like them. They seemed odd to me. Scary large places where people I know and that I didn’t know would mock me for expressing my inner most thoughts…no matter how odd, funny or relevant.
They seemed like…high school hallways.
I am not a fan at all of the “I have a blog where I share my thoughts of the day that I would normally keep private that can be read by anyone, but I will be offended if no one comments” or “I’m not going to let you read my blog unless you comment on my very normal daily activities”. Your blog, in my opinion, shouldn’t be a popularity contest of “who’s responding to me most”, “who’s saying something relevant” or whatever.
I can’t say that I’ve never caught myself being emotionally tied to waiting for a response to a blog I posted, but it’s more waiting from a small core group of people who I consider more family than friends. My blogs are open to the public. I don’t care if I know you or not, because I’ve come to the conclusion that these are just as much a marketing and promotional tool as much an open forum to allow me to get what’s in my head out when it’s taking up too much room.
I’m still old enough to remember when my female friend’s diary’s where their sacred place. These things had more security that any government could provide and it was DEATH DEATH DEATH if you ran some covert operation to sneak a peak at some nugget of knowledge …only to find out it was more likely to be something like:
“Dear Diary,
Today Nathan Fillion looked at me in class. He’s so dreamy. I just think he’s the bee’s knees. Oh, gotta go… mom just called for dinner. TTFN”
Now that I’ve addressed my completely hetero man crush for Nathan Fillion I’ll continue on.
The Sacred Diary, and this is something that Indiana Jones should really be looking for, was hidden away. Some had a lock on them, but mostly…rarely, if ever, shared. It was meant to be the sacred place of thoughts and dreams that was like your physical guru of knowledge. One that you could look on later in life and go …. “what in the blue hell was I thinking when I was twelve”.
Now we live in the information age where those very thoughts, daily activities, and the like are played out for everyone to see and what was secret…now deems a response. We are disconnecting from each other, and society, and from what was so good, for those of us old enough to remember, like being excited when a friend called because you didn’t have 101 avenues to talk to them. I am getting old and I miss those days.
My kids will learn the joy of Outside. They will learn that this is a medium that is a tool. My kids will call me “old fashioned” and “out of touch”, but I won’t care. I’ll just go outside, take a walk and live with the simple joy that maybe…I’ll come home to a message from a friend that called.
That’s me.
Simple.