At the risk of sounding hopelessly ancient, I just want to write for a moment about the amazing connectedness the internet allows us. Not too long after we graduated from college, my former roommates and I decided that every month we would each write a newsy letter about our lives, mail it to one designated person, and that person would make copies and mail them out to everyone. We even had a system for making postage fair. I remember feeling a little sad when we decided we could just email each other our letters. It seemed less personal, and I feared we would be less likely to follow through with writing when there wasn't someone specifically waiting for a letter to include in a packet. And we have lost that. I no longer get newsy letters in the mailbox from anyone, and I do miss them. Really, I get hardly anything in my mailbox at all. Instead I have the world of blogs, and live journal, and facebook, and it's completely different. With facebook I can keep up with my high school friend who moved to France. Without facebook, she'd be lost to me. With facebook, I know a little more about what is going on with my brother. He only lives fifteen minutes away, but we're all crazy busy people, and (nonsensically) checking in with family seems like something you can always do tomorrow. With facebook, I get to follow little pieces of the lives of people I knew and cared about in college, people who were more than acquaintances but not quite dear friends, people I'd be delighted to run into or see at a reunion, but people I wouldn't otherwise be thinking about. With facebook, live journal, and blogs, I get to keep up with some of the writers I've met through James River Writers over the past year. I feel fairly confident that I would not have had the courage, or made the time, to continue to forge connections with them if all I'd had was snail mail.
With blogs, I get to find out what all sorts of people are thinking about all sorts of different things. I get to peruse the thought-provoking musings of my friends the EDG and Bemused Writer. I can read Demon Baby and Me or Mothers of Brothers and be comforted that I am not the only one with a wild man four-year-old, strange parenting stories, and a take on motherhood that is a bit on the sardonic side. I can get a dose of humor from my friend Wildcat or from The Blog of Unnecessary Quotes (which you may have to be an English major to appreciate; no one else I've inflicted it on so far has been amused). And I can get a supply of information on teaching, reading, and writing that is so close to limitless that it sometimes makes me feel small in the same way that looking at a black sky of endless stars can.
It's different, this connectedness. In some ways, it's incredible. I can find out so much, about so many people, and so many things, so easily. And it can lead to better relationships and deeper understandings, great conversations, and new friendships. Or it can overwhelm with the trivial and mundane, providing a sense of connecting without any actual effort or relationship-building. For every well-written, thought-provoking blog, there's a silly quiz I feel compelled to take. For every scintillating tidbit about someone's life, there's another person telling me what he or she is watching on tv. Good and not so good. Silver lining and cloud.
Connectedness. Use it responsibly.
4 comments:
I'm with you....I miss seeing the emotion in a person's handwriting, the stamp they chose, the journey an envelope took to reach me.
I also wonder about "spin" -- so many people appear to me using Facebook, Twitter, etc. to "market" themselves, their work, even their families. I know for sure of a friend whose marriage is on the rocks, who puts a shiny face on everything for the social network sites.
Even beyound letters, there is no substitute for being with people, for looking in their eyes when you exchange information about yourselves and your lives.
Not to mention there's just something about the romance/mystery/Something! with letters. A generation that will miss the tangible poetry that is receiving something to hold in the hands to read again and again, inhaling the fragrance of a special scent put on the paper, or the drift of rose petals as they fall out from their secreted place in the folds.
And the missing of being able to analyze handwriting and wondering how much it reflects the real person behind the letter. ;) ;)
But in some ways it does make it easy to be unique and more interesting these days, more 'special' - since all you have to do is take time to scribble a few lines in a card and mail it, to go up in people's estimation. ;-D
[Your friend, Bemused Writer.
and glad to know I give you thought provoking things to think about. ;)
[I must not have my notifications set, or set right ;) - since I didn't realize you had posted! Course could be cause I haven't done any run-by postings myself lately... ;)
And this is an interesting post, since all the new communications with all the new technologies is such a two-edged sword.
And as I said in above post - especially with love letters.
And where would we writers be without old letters and handwritten journals to cipher out and dream about. ;)
Katharine:
LOVE the blog name, by the way.
And I totally agree. I think I was blessed to have a deaf grandmother. I wrote her long letters from college--and on through my life until I was 30, when she passed away. The phone was not an option. In person, she read lips and could hear a LITTLE bit. She also had a speech impediment that was akin to sounding like Katharine Hepburn after five martinis. So letters it was . . . and it gave me the ability to communicate deeply with someone I loved vey much, all through letters. Now I blog . . . I find I still strive for the connectedness . . . but it's a different medium. I like to think my grandmother is looking over my shoulder, nodding her approval. In fact, I live much of my life trying to make her proud.
E
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