On A Sidewalk to Nowhere
A Head Full of Doubt and a Road Full of Promise
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Too Long for Twitter 5
Right now I am in hour 5 of a 12 hour workday. We had 4 hours of training for our new hotel software this morning. Then I went to lunch with my friend/coworker Nick, and our trainer. Then I went home and changed. Then I got coffee. Now, I am back for 8 more hours. Just so I can be back at 8 tomorrow for MORE training. (And then real class.) Woot.
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Too Long For Twitter 7
Every time I watch an episode of Psych, (which is filmed in Vancouver), and see the breath coming out of their mouths because it’s so cold, and they’re wearing not enough clothes because the show is set in Santa Barbara, it reminds me of being an extra in Blue Like Jazz, and I wonder how many other shows and movies deal with the cold conundrum.
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Too Long for Twitter 8
The other day, I was driving down the road to my house, and there was a kid on a four-wheeler up on the side of the hill next to me, and he had stopped and was sitting on his four wheeler, texting. And, I just thought to myself, “Only in Jasper.” But what I really mean, is only in any small rural town where four-wheeling and texting enthusiasm are dually rampant in teenagers.
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The Internet Is Weird
There are people with whom I interact on a daily or weekly basis, who I haven’t seen in years. Literal years. The earth has circled the sun numerous times since I last saw them. However, I feel like I am up to date on what is happening in their lives, I chat with them on skype/facebook regularly, and I know about the joys and frustrations of their lives.
There are also people who I interact with on the internet whom I have NEVER met. For example, people who randomly follow my tumblr, or whose I follow, or who I met on twitter, or whatever. Maybe we have mutual friends, but have never met, or perhaps they happened upon a post I tagged, and started to follow me. Either way, they comment on stuff and I respond, or vice-versa. And, I shit you not, I even babysat for a guy who I know solely because of Twitter. Twice. (That sounds kind of sketchy, but it’s totally not.)
The internet makes the world smaller. It makes me able to connect with friends when I live in a tiny town and rarely get to see them face-to-face. The internet makes me cautious about what I say, but makes it infinitely easier to broadcast my words.
This blog sometimes makes me nervous because of the principles that make the internet weird. I don’t know the majority of my followers, which tends to make me write more freely about my thoughts, my emotions, my struggles, and my dreams. And strangely, it’s the six or eight followers I do know that make me nervous when I post very personal things about myself. I’m not afraid of an axe-murderer (or other creepy person a la Catfish) finding me or my words, but knowing that what I say could alter the way friends think of me does make me nervous. Often, when I’m followed by an old friend, I wonder if my views on faith or body image or art or LL Cool J will offend them, because they might not have heard my thoughts on any of those things during our friendship.
My hope is that the weirdness of the internet and the community I find here and on twitter and facebook and every other social media outlet I am a part of gives me courage to continue to say how I feel and what I believe, and to say it aloud, and not just through my keyboard. I hope that the outlets through which I find community and inspiration and happiness help me to rise up to fully embrace the best parts of myself and understand the worst. And I hope that somehow, I can provide that sense of community for someone else reading this.
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I didn’t end up liveblogging my day, but I did pretty thoroughly live-tweet it.
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My life.
"I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page concurrently."
- Donald Miller
