Yesterday, while working on a job proposal, and attempting to showcase my Web 2.0 knowledge thus far, I realized that I am a “somewhat” user. Without a cell phone or a blackberry or other form of PDA with which to send and receive a constant stream of Facebook updates, surf the Web for restaurants in the hood and access my e-mail for the latest work requests, I am certainly not a super user. (Remember when “user” was a kind of person you didn’t want to be, and PDAs meant public displays of affection?)
Each morning, as I settle in front of my Google Reader, hot coffee ready to fuel my quest for knowledge, I quickly become overwhelmed by all the news I’m supposed to be digging and all the blogs I’m supposed to be following and all the bookmarks I’m supposed to be tagging for later reading, knowing full well this is an exercise in futility. Later when? Meanwhile, the Digg stories pile up, and I can barely keep pace with the shoveling. The only thing I really want to dig is a great big hole in which to bury my Wasted 2.0 head.
The problem is, I love everything about being online. I just think it might not be a healthy love. I feel like a kid who doesn’t know which ride to get on first because the possibilities for pleasure are legion and I am but one. And there’s no time to take it all in, or even half of it. Hi, my name is Liz, and I have an addiction . . .
Adding to this affliction is the possibility that my Web 2.0 habit has given me ADD. Or perhaps I already had ADD and Web 2.0 just exacerbated my condition (Web 2.0 did seem like the perfect medicine for my naturally distracted disposition, but now it feels more like a bad-influence friend pressuring me to start freebasing). My congenital short attention span has become impossibly shorter: instead of taking time to savour a good article, or even a few good articles, I snack on headlines and tell myself I’m full. Then I panic as I read the Twitter updates of the folks I am following, gobsmacked not only at the amount and quality of information they seem to consume, but how they also swiftly digest and regurgitate the masses of information as quotable, notable, pithy tweets. Do they ever sleep?
Meanwhile, in a desperate race to keep up, I am depriving myself of nourishing content, and watching the wall I am about to hit race towards me.
Yesterday afternoon, my friend, Kim, extended a helping hand. A fleshy, warm hand.
She brought me to exactly the right kind of shop to do exactly the right kind of shopping therapy. As soon as we walked through the door, she led me directly to the back of the store where every imaginable flower extract – bottled and cataloged – was lined against the wall like an olde timey apothecary, offering a balm for every imaginable ill. Kim put the flower extract guidebook into my hands, flipped it open to “Depression and Despondency” and then discretely went about her business, leaving me to read. I mean really read. As I poured through the entries, I am not ashamed to admit that I misted up. I recognized myself in so many of the descriptions and longed for the right remedies. Gorse, for instance, treats cynicism-inflected sadness – when you think there is no more goodness left in the world. Bleeding Hearts are for grief due to loss in general. Wild Oat is for discouragement related specifically to loss of love. I needed to sit down. Just beside me someone had placed a green folding chair with a lovely embroidered pillow placed at the back for support. Such comfort. I flipped through the rest of the book and found flower tinctures for all kinds of other ailments – obsession, complacency, jealousy, desire (for having too much desire in general, or for desiring the wrong person, or for not desiring the right person enough, etc.).
The idea of imbibing flower tinctures as treatments for the soul touched me deeply. The thought of knocking back mini bottle after mini bottle on a particularly bad day made me smile. Imagine getting fall-down drunk on flower remedies, my friends having to mop me off the floor and then peel off my flower-extract-stained clothes, forcing me under a cold shower while loudly complaining, “you smell like a bloody green house!”
I didn’t buy a tincture in the end, probably because a liquid seems so fleeting. But I did purchase a beautiful pale, cloudy pink piece of rose quartz because the little piece of paper with the description said it was good for healing the heart and for self esteem issues. It felt smooth and solid in my palm, like a little . . . well . . . rock.
The night before, as Kim and I were walking along College street to see a diversionary film (Vicki Christina Barcelona: better than the last few Woody Allen films, but didn't touch Crimes and Misdemeanors or Hannah and Her Sisters), I said that I wanted to feel like I was a part of something larger than myself. Last night, squeezing the my little rose quartz in one hand while eating a big bowl of soul-satisfying Vietnamese pork and noodle soup with the other, and with Kim sitting across from me, her own pockets full of blue and black stones for various healing properties, slurping back her own bowl of soup, I realized what I meant about being connected to something larger was about being connected to something more tangible than the online world of networking and RSS feeds. I meant doing things like eating soup with Kim, or stuffing my pockets full of colourful rocks.
During the summer, I did explore my feelings of loss through flowers. I started a project of painting my friends’ husbands – men I love and respect but cannot have – with their favourite flowers taped to their heads.
It's not that I want my friends' husbands. What makes them great is who they are because they are married to my friends. It's who the two of them have become together -- themselves and more of themselves. The feeling I have for these men is as awkward to express as trying to tape their favourite flowers to their heads.
My love for Web 2.0 is somewhat like that, too -- a longing to express myself in a world that I admire but don't yet fully belong to. I feel awkward, but my love is pure. And any hint that I might make it in this world encourages me to keep my fingers clicking my keyboard. For instance, I had a moment this summer when I strategically asked my friend, Mark, amazing husband of my amazing friend, Tonya, (and who I now refer to as Mozilla Mark because he's the Executive Director of the Mozilla foundation) if he'd tried the beta of a Firefox app that had not yet been released. I'll never forget the deep gratification of seeing Mark's head swivel sharply around so that he could fix me with a gaze of amazement and, yes, YES, respect! I was the owner of a piece of bleeding-edge news. I had information! I realized right then and there I'd have to paint him. And soon.
Since the summer, I am sad to say I abandoned the painting project in order to spend more time boning up on Web 2.0 stuff, but it's all in the service of a bigger, and hopefully, better picture: to build a soul-satisfying career. I know that the energy I put into this project will pay off in the long run. But in the meantime, I am trying to balance the time I spend online with the time I spend re-investing in the friendships I missed when I lived in Montreal.
As much as I love the virtual world, I need the tangible world. Tangible like my friend Kim who knows how to make me laugh. And tangible like this small piece of petrified earth that has evolved over millenia, and that will be around long after I’m gone; a rock that shares the same name as a flower I don’t actually love, and the same name as my grandmother who I loved very much, and the same name as my niece who is a living red-headed doll who I love more and more each day, and the name I would give the daughter I wish I had who I would love with all my heart. That’s what I’m talking about. The tangible, hard stuff. Life 1.0.
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