The Twittersphere

It's funny how you can add -sphere to any word and it instantly becomes a place -- usually a digital landscape inhabited by those who claim to be social and networking, but who are actually so detached from interpersonal contact that they prefer screens to faces, and keys to voices.

Ok, that sounds much more negative than I mean it to. It's not a judgment, it's just a fact. And the truth is, I now see that I've done things backwards, so I'm trying to catch up a bit and have a place in both worlds.

I've always been a writer; good or bad content, it was just something I had to do. Several years ago, I leveraged that compulsion to join LiveJournal, then moved on to MySpace, and while I was a prolific blogger, I also kept most of my friends at a digital distance. Since then, I've lost interest in calling web avatars my friends, and have come to prefer face to face contact. If I want to be alone, I stay home. If I want to be social, I go out and spend time talking to people. And it has made me better at connecting with other human beings, while it seems like everyone around me is getting worse.

I've watched many of my "analog" friends become so immersed in the social technology that they can't relate to the people in front of them. If you're not living in their FacePlace, you don't really exist; they have nothing to say to you. I have no desire to be like that. But in my attempts to avoid being That Girl, I've lost my ability to express myself online.

The other night I was looking for a blog post I had written a few years back, because something had reminded me of it. I never found it; instead I got caught up in reading months and months worth of old posts. They were engaging, funny, sometimes insightful, and they had a distinct voice and point of view. I honestly couldn't believe that I had written them. Because they were actually really good, and I wouldn't be able to write them today.

I can talk to strangers for hours in a bar, which would have mortified me in the past, but I'm really bad at connecting with the friends I can't always see face to face, because I don't use my online outlets anymore. I can produce pages and pages of corporate communications and technical documents, but I'm not good at writing anymore. I'm out of practice.

So I'm working myself back into shape -- blogging more often, joining Twitter -- trying to get a balance of the real world and the innernets. Because they are still different places, no matter what the movies try to tell you.

But no. You still won't see me on Facebook. Get over it.