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I spend a lot of time by myself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in my mind, though I do know that it wears on me after a long time. I tend to be introverted, so I enjoy the peace and quiet. In fact, last week was so hectic that I’m looking forward to having a little down time in the next few days. It helps me reenergize for those times when I have to be around big groups of people.
At the same time, I know it’s not good for me to spend too much time alone. I get a little bit depressed when I do that. The good news about that is I’m finding ways to start filling my time with connections. I’ve realized that the summer around here will be pretty laid back. Not much goes on because a lot of people from church travel. All of the “stuff” slows down that we fill our time with. So I may have to be more proactive in filling summer days than I will during the school year. This post-Labor day, I am looking to my new-ish weekly schedule. I find that I have an exercise class three mornings per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday), a Bible study on Tuesday morning, and the potential for two to three evenings a week to be filled with rehearsals, small group, and meetings. I still have all day Thursday unaccounted for, plus my afternoons. Why did I think I needed to find a job to fill my time?
I think it’s because I need to have the people connection. I read an article the other day about telecommuting, talking about how every four hours you should log some face-to-face time with someone, even if it’s just saying hi to the neighbor. I think I will be covered with my out-of-house stuff, plus walking the dog around our neighborhood.
But all of this has gotten me thinking about how I’m “connected” to a lot of people on Facebook (178 friends as of this writing! Why?), through reading others’ blogs (I follow somewhere in the ballpark of 15 other blogs, give or take), and sharing my own stuff via this blog (with a handful of readers) and my facebook status (which sometimes gets a comment or two). Despite all of those supposed connections, I know I’m not really connected to a lot of people. I know that those of you who read this care about me, as do quite of few of those facebook friends. But I do know that getting out there and just being with people is the real key to friendships. We spent the weekend with some friends from our old church who drove down to visit, and it was nice to just socialize for a while. Sometimes even just being quiet with another person is better than me blabbing my endless thoughts over the internet. It’s probably why I haven’t joined the Twitter phenomenon yet – I don’t see the point in sharing my status with the world ad naseum. Yes, I do the status thing on facebook, but that’s merely an occassional thing and not what I see the purpose of that site to be.
Anyway, that’s my rant about this online thing. I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong. But I can see the falacy of always being connected. How ironic, given that I just got an iPhone next week and can facebook, blog, email, or even twitter if I wanted to 24/7, no matter where I am. It’s probably a good thing I’m realizing this now.
Blooming Joy! 
Yep, you’re right. I remember bulletin boarding, as it was, in the 1980’s with my brother in Nebraska and me in Oklahoma, then Alabama. If any computer geeks are reading this, it was PC Pursuit and Opus. At that time, anyone on the web could read anything that anyone else on the web wrote to anyone, but no one cared because we already all knew what everyone else was doing.
Today, spinoffs: it’s turned out like show and tell in grade school. There are some kids who want to hog it, take a lot of time, be important, be in the middle of things. There are others of us who just use blogs and such to communicate pretty much essential and fundamental things.
My wife always asks why people use Facebook instead of email. I think that’s a Mickey Rooney question. Email stays about as personal as you are gonna get on the web, and about as private as you’re gonna be, too. Whereas, as we know from the Verizon add, everyone else can read what you write on your daughter’s wall.
Here’s a theological answer. We connect as members of the Body in all kinds of ways, some of them being cybernetic. We support each other cybernetically, learn of each other’s life, happenings, needs, joys, pains, fears and foes cybernetically.
Finally, there is the anonymity and concealment thing. It’s not as much so for you and me, Stephanie, but some people love to be out there on the web because in truth no one knows who they really are. I assume Stephanie Pittock is on the other end of the 10-base T cabling, but it could just be someone else with a Schnauzer whose name is NOT Frodo and who never heard of Travis pretending to be you. Scary thought.
I think the internet, in all its iterations, is what you make of it. I’ve formed some of my richest, closest friendships via the internet–but then, I’ve also gone out of my way to meet those people in real life, and most of those meetings have only deepened and solidified the friendship.
The reverse is true, too, that some people I’ve known in real life have become better and better friends because I’ve been able to email with them and read their blogs despite living hundreds of miles away from them–like you! 🙂 Or my good friend Joe, whom I went to high school with but didn’t really get to be good friends with till we were at different colleges and emailing each other. Now we’re both married and have lived in different states our whole adult lives, but partly thanks to email and the internet we’re as close as we ever were, and we see each other in real life whenever we can. In fact, he and his wife were just here visiting!
I do know what you mean about the overload, both real-life and virtual. I need that down time to recharge as well, and sometimes I feel like I’m blabbing too much on my blog and twitter and I get a little sick of myself. But really, the main reason I blog is to keep in touch with family and friends, to let them know what we’re up to. And twitter, well, that’s just for fun. 😉