Realization number one, most early blogs strikingly resemble ads for relationships on match.com. No joke, the “I’ve never done this before”, “it’s all so new”, “I don’t know what to say” it’s all the crap you feed a guy during a drunk hook-up. I like this, I don’t want you to stop, just don’t tell your friends I’m easy. Or is it the guy that’s supposed to say all that? Insert, I’m a nice guy, you can trust me, I want to take you out later this week, I promise. You get the idea. But somewhere in the middle we sprint ahead to month three, relatively early in relationship time, and the blog becomes a taxi cab confession. Here’s my worst and most horrible self, you can like it or not. In some chaotic way, that false pseudo-intimacy with strangers, that raw humanity, draws us to one another.
In a society driven by technology, new methods to stay connected in fact separate us. Distracting us from the friend in the car, the conversation over dinner, and the very people with whom we choose to spend our time. All in favor of the text, “who could it be?”; the call, “she said what?”; or sometimes just avoiding the neighbors, “can’t talk now, I might be needed in surgery.” Interesting that technology is also the very same force that draws us together. We meet in this false contrived world of intimacy (thank you Al Gore) where you know my deepest and darkest thoughts and not really my name. Unless of course I put it out there, in which case we’re right back to the match.com add for love and affection.
Realization number two, we read on and we find that every story comes from somewhere. Every person has something to say. “We are the authors of our own narrative” (thank you Sociology homework). The vices we find familiar in ourselves appear shiny and new when someone else confesses to the same sins. This human condition of accountability unites us. Places, time zones, appropriate attire, all of the limitations between where I end and you begin dissolve and you’ll read. In a quiet cove or a loud café, you’re reading my thoughts, not interrupting or grabbing your cell. You’re silencing the ringer, sipping your mocha, and we commune. I may be in a meeting, having my hair done, or doing some other rote task you’ll read about in a week; but in this moment we are united. It is in this way that I have shared a piece of myself and you have allowed it to be a part of your day, if only for a brief moment. The magic of positive interruption. It is actually quite beautiful, like all one-sided relationships.
