I need a life. Seriously.
If my personal life had the structure and responsibility I have in my professional work, I could be hell on wheels. I have lots of great ideas and things I still want to accomplish, but the minute I enter my apartment after a day at the office, I become a vegetable. I park my increasingly ample ass in front of my computer, with the tv set on to my left, and stay there until it’s time to go to bed. I manage to answer maybe half of the hundreds of emails I get a day, skim most of the hundred-plus blogs I subscribe to, and surf dozens more other websites.
Yesterday, I got sucked into the Facebook black hole. I promised myself I wouldn’t but I have succumbed. A friend invited me to become his friend and since I had already set up an account but never done anything with it, I decided to accept. Then I spent the rest of the night updating my profile and signing up new friends.
I already have a Linkedin profile, two in fact. One for my 9-5 career, another for my dormant yet still hoping-to-be-rekindled acting career. I have a Flickr account, and a page on MyBarakObama.com. I created the family tree we all contribute to on Geni.com. I run several listservs and this blog, which even got a mention on Ramone Johnson’s About.com blog.
I surf the sports sites, the adult sites, Youtube (I’m hooked on Derrick L. Brigg’s video show ADTV) and of course the entertainment sites with news and ticket offers for things going on around New York. But I haven’t been to a show of any kind in ages because I spend too much time online.
The internet was supposed to connect people. No doubt it has, but the question is, what is the quality of those relationships and how easy is it to conduct them solely online with no impetus to ever engage each other face-to-face?