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Monday, November 17, 2008

Would You Be...My Neighbor?

Would You Be My Neighbor?

It's funny - I was reading Mommy Needs Coffee this morning, and her post really struck a nerve with me.  She said her worlds were colliding - mine are too.  

And, strangely enough, in the same way.

It's all Facebook's fault.

Do you compartmentalize your life, too?  I think that most people probably do.  You have your family in one compartment, work friends in another, maybe your church friends and neighbors are in a couple of other ones.  Then, you have your online friends - and those can even be compartmentalized further - mine are.

I have my art-blogger-friends and my mommy-blogger-friends and my homeschool-blogger-friends and all these old-high-school-chum-friends and so on and so on...

My Google reader window has Dissociative Disorder.

All this to say - my world has both expanded and contracted exponentially since I left home for college.  I now have friends all over the world and those friends can become friends with each other with just a few keystrokes.  For someone like me who has been kind of a loner all my life, it's quite disconcerting.  I start watching the news with a different eye.  I see wildfires in California and immediately worry about Marta and her firefighter-husband Rudy.  There are tsunami in the South Pacific and I wonder if they are affecting Ai and her family.

A hurricane blows into the Texas Gulf Coast and I am immediately concerned about Stefani and Heather.  You see my point?  That's a lot for one OCD hermit to keep track of.

Except that its really good.  I've found friends I've not heard from in over 20 years.  I keep in touch with those that I love dearly and don't see nearly enough (here and here).  I've met new people, and lurked on the edges of a thousand parties, all while soaking in the goodness of it.

It's like one giant neighborhood, and there's a block party all the time.

I like my neighbors.

Do you?

4 comments:

  1. Your poor poor Google reader...
    ;-D And yes, I know what you mean!

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  2. Yes, I do that too - worry about Blogger friends (I hope I still have some :( !!) I'm a loner too, and wonder how it would be if we all got together, I'm sure some of us are very different to how we come across in print! I was thinking of you last week when a reporter was standing near that huge monument in DC, I never noticed how absolutely ginormous it was until I saw your photo!

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  3. So true, Diahn! Sometimes it becomes a bit overwhelming, but mostly it's such an amazing feeling to feel close to people all over the world.

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  4. i once heard someone say that the world is now like a village, so true!

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