late night thoughts
You know that thing where you go on vacation, it doesn't have to be a long vacation, just long enough to make you forget about your daily grind and all the shit you somehow manage to fit into a day, and then you come back from vacation and you're all of a sudden behind on everything, even though you knew you were going on vacation, and the prospect of tackling the pile of things-to-do is so stressful that instead of doing any of it, you do the opposite and pretend it doesn't exist? That. Oh, and also that thing where you need a vacation upon coming back from vacation. I'm mostly exaggerating, but still, that stuff is annoying, amirite? It's also kind of amazing how just a couple days in the rainforest can make you totally forget about all the stuff you do every day. All that stuff that can get piled up if left for just a couple days unattended. The unread emails, the tweets unseen, the comments unread, the posts un-composed, etc. etc. It's kind of crazy. And bizarre that all of that is just normal life. Sometimes it makes me want to just unplug permanently. Find some job that's 100% offline, live in a place where there's only dial-up, and just breathe in the fresh air. It's so weird to me that all of this internet stuff has only just begun in the last couple decades. That cellphones weren't even a thing until the late 80's, and that if we wanted to communicate we did it via mail, landline, or face to face. I kind of want to go back. And I'm a little sad that my kids will never know what it's like to live in a world without cell phones and mobile internet. While I love the connectivity, especially as someone who lives thousands of miles from family, I'm afraid we're addicted to the connectivity. We can't even imagine life without cell phones any more. I don't know. I should add a disclaimer that this is sleepily written, stream-of-consciousness style, at 1 am. But really, maybe our ultra-connectivity isn't that healthy for us? Are we addicted to the connectivity? Is the internet giving us a false sense of connectivity to other human beings? We tweet, and blog, and facebook, and instagram, and text but we're not meeting our neighbors, or the other regulars at our local coffee shop. We're chatting with thousands of random people around the world, but walk down are local streets with our faces buried in our cellphones. We "communicate" in 140 characters, whittling our language down to abbreve's to fit our ideas in. Sounds a little double plus ungood, to me.
Anyway, all that is to say, I guess, that I like blogging and this whole online community internet thing, but I'm a little afraid of it at the same time. It's probably a bit too conspiracy theorist to get all Orwellian about it, but I value things like true communication, and real live human interaction, and long theological discussions late at night in art buildings, and dates where no one checks their phone or instagrams food pictures. Blogging and online communities are meant to bring people together, but I think they can also do the opposite. I have no neat conclusion to tie up this basket of thoughts, just thought I'd throw that out there and let you do with it what you may. Enjoy some rainforest induced thoughts on your Thursday.
