Whew, I got it.
Perspective, once hard-won (or not) after years of trial and error, is now something I can gain from a quick traipse through my cyberhood.
I love that we’re all going through bullshit and writing about going through bullshit and commenting on how other people are going through bullshit and obsessively checking our email or RSS reader or IM client. That’s not a sarcastic “love”, either. It’s extremely helpful to know that none of us are as special or as unique as we think we are: that I, just like you, have really petty yet entertaining hang-ups and worries and we can all get over them eventually. (Hear that? We can.)
What drives me a little nuts is when I read posts from people that are contentless, plaintive cries for attention, scattershot pings across the blogosphere too vague for any of us to claim. It drives me a little nuts not because someone needs attention — we all do — but because no one is taking responsibility for it. The plastic bag is drifting across the highway and will it collide with a windshield, carried for a few choice moments? We’re not plastic bags; we have more say in the matter than that. We can reach out, really reach out to each other.
The film “Me and You and Everyone We Know” treats the subject of connection in an increasingly disconnected world. Awkward near-misses and pretty collisions form a quilt of realistic, humanistic love. No one here is anything other than what they are, but they are routinely mis-seen by others. Only when the characters stop looking do they truly see anything.
If I write here that I really need some support, that I’ve just experienced something excruciating and overwhelming, I have no doubt that you will read and consider and maybe even respond. But I’m telling you what I want from you; I’m handing you the script. That isn’t interacting with you authentically at all. Maybe you’re having a shitty day, a shitty week, a shitty month and you don’t want to play the Supportive Friend role right now. I shouldn’t judge you based on whether or not you comment on my blog post or “friend” me (nice verb, now) on the latest social networking site.
Speaking of those, someone said to me just a few hours ago, “I’ll know you’re dead when I hear about a Web 2.0 beta from someone else.” And I’ve become that person, that gadgety-freaky magpie hopping from new site to new site. That isn’t bad in and of itself, but I’d like to be known for something a bit more substantial, because Web 2.0 matters even less than our daily bullshit does … at least to those of us who aren’t making a ridiculous amount of money off it.
Thanks to blogging for the wake-up call. And thanks to “Cheers” for still being funny twenty years later.
2 Comments
I think it’s cool you know all the new hip websites. I have actually found a great deal many things through you. Livejournal for example, so many years ago. Those amazing cartoons that looked like strawberry shortcake and talked smack, MUDS.. I could go on.
But when I think of you, that is most certainly not the first thing I think of. I have followed you on the interweb for a long time. I consider you my first ever online “friend” as it was. You and Aeris (ben) heh.
My personal reason for continuing to follow you is because I give you partial credit in the fact that I am in the place in life I am right now. You taught my how to code stuff in mIRC and then I learned HTML and so on and so forth.
Also if you remember lil-devil from our old chat haunts, he was the one who told me about the art institutes and is the reason I moved to Atlanta at all.
Meeting you guys in that little chat world and spending time and talking and learning did have an impact on my life, it was a bend in the road and one I’ll always look back fondly on!
You prolly think it’s dorky I put that much importance on it, but to me it was. I have always thought you where a cool chick, who liked the same kind of things I liked on the internet.
I’ve taken a break from “regular” blogging because I realized I was having to work to find things to write about. (That and my primary camera is broken, making posting new, good-quality images far more difficult)
I also read someone’s posting once that said, essentially, that the writer no longer would assume that any of her friends read any of her blog entries. It was a freeing experience for her, dropping any expectations of not knowing what topics could already be considered to have been “discussed” and which had not.
Blogging has been a way of keeping me writing, of finding friends I would have never found otherwise and been something of a lifeline when I was unemployed and losing hope. I also know I feel a responsibility to not waste anyone’s time by just writing to write and post something, anything.
(Nice to see you back, btw)