Technology and Me

It all started when I was trying to get pregnant 6 years ago. I found a website to monitor my cycle on and ended up joining several of their "buddy groups" (smaller, semi-private message boards for women with something in common--location, fertility issue, etc.).

A few years later, when that fertility website wanted to start charging us to sit around and gab all day about our cervical fluid (AS IF), the LDS buddy group I had joined split off and started our own forum. But I kept up with a couple of the groups who stayed as well.

A year or so after that, one friend from the LDS forum became an avid blogger. And she kept asking me, "Did you read my blog today?" I hadn't. And I thought at the time, "What do you think I do? Sit around and read people's blogs all day??"

HA.HA.HA. If only I could have foreseen my own future....

Slowly, more and more people I knew were beginning to blog. By this time, I was reading emails, had kept up with 3 different buddy groups, plus my LDS forum, and had several internet "pen pals" that I wrote back and forth with regularly. I couldn't imagine finding more time in my day to be on the internet. Well, actually I could. But I was seriously afraid of what it would do to my life. Well, a year or two later I finally gave in to the whole blogging thing, not sure if I would like it or even have something to say (AS IF). And what do you know, I quickly found myself doing exactly what I had previously scoffed at....sitting around and doing nothing all day but reading people's blogs!

But that is IT, I told myself. I already spend way too much time on the internet. I have got to cut back somewhere.

Then along came Facebook. I consider myself a pretty technologically savvy person. I like to stay on the cutting edge of things. But I had a feeling Facebook would make me even more likely to neglect my children, get yelled at by my husband, and have my fingers permanently meld to the keyboard. So I did sign up, and I added friends little by little, but I never got into the whole constant-posting-of-every-tiny-aspect-of-my-life part of it. And even less into the constantly-reading-about-every-tiny-aspect-of-your-life part of it. I mostly used Facebook for the "So THAT's what he/she looks like after all these years!" feature of it. And I think I'm pretty comfortable leaving it that way. Especially since I'm seriously rubbed wrong by the fact that some people seem to think that posting things on Facebook is the same thing as talking to someone in person. (It's NOT, in case you're not clear on that, some of you.) I literally discovered, in a one week period, missed announcements of one friend's baby's birth, one friend moving to another part of the country, and one friend getting married. ALL OF THESE EVENTS WERE ONLY POSTED ON FACEBOOK. No mailings, no phone calls, no "hey let's get together before I move to Oregon"s. Just "I'm flinging this out there to the whole world and if you happen to check my status during the 3 hours it shows up in your feed, then you'll know this super important thing about my life, and if not, oh well." See.....that's just not how I want to live my life. I know everyone says the internet is here to bring us closer together, make connections, blah blah blah... It's all lies, if you ask me. The way I see it, internet technology has allowed us to become so isolated from the real people in our lives--our next door neighbors, our kids' friends' moms, the people in our office, etc.--that we can avoid actually talking to another human being that we care about for years if we utilize all the technology available to us. We can spend 8 years in a house without our next door neighbor ever knowing our name.

And then there's Twitter. I can't even go there.

As much as I feel like this may mean that I've reached the point in my life where I will start being "old," or stop being hip, or will no longer be as technologically advanced as humanly possible......I think I might be OK with that.

Because my next door neighbor on one said is named Dave. And my next door neighbors on the other side are Steve and Marilyn. And my neighbor behind me is Heather. And their dogs are named Cooper and Regis and Ein. And I bring them muffins sometimes. And they lend me Paprika when I need it. And I send out real, actual, paper invitations in the mail and pick up the phone to talk to the people I love. And that makes me feel like the people around me are real and I am real. It makes me feel connected to the world. More connected than 140 characters of text on my iPhone ever could.

p.s. This doesn't mean I don't love you if you're way more technologically advanced than me now. It just means I think I'm going to stay here for a while. I hope you'll still love me too.