Recommitment Fail

So it officially happened. I was sucked down into the facebook K-hole, but it hasn't been all that bad. Status updates, like the ubiquitous tweets, are like blogging in soundbites. Little flash-captures of thoughts. I like them. I like keeping in touch with people I knew so long ago in some of my other lives. For example, I now regularly hear from the woman who befriended me when I worked at the electronics superstore in Billings. We used to go dancing at clubs together, eat at Dennys (!). Her little daughter loved me, and the feeling was mutual. She taught me how to take care of my eyebrows, though I don't always do so as well as I could. I'm also in touch with a guy who I knew really peripherally as an older man who dated a girl who was friends with my friends. He's now very vocally political and leans toward raw foodism. The less satisfying facebook friendships are actually those that were a bit closer to me than the above. My first and third loves, for example. Frustrating relationships that were inevitably disappointing and unrequited, in one way or another.

Basically, as much of a curmudgeon as I've become in my early-middle age, facebook offers the veneer of contact. It is an immediate avenue for contacting people who otherwise slip into the void of personal history. I almost wish that absolutely everyone was on facebook. One could friend them or not, but at least they would be there. For this reason, I have a handful of names that I periodically search for, just to see if perhaps they've popped up. No luck so far. Some people just resist social networking, and that for reasons familiar to all of us.

I've recently started to miss my blog more acutely, however. I'm in danger of confusing it for a journal in which I might write more or less completely uncensored. This is the peril of having no audience. I'm hoping to pick it back up. We'll see if I can do better this time around.