Virtual Exhibitionism of the Soul

Perhaps you have wondered if I have been hit by a bus. What else could explain such an extended period without new blog posts? Maybe I really have been posting but the Google servers have been erased by the Stuxnet worm. Maybe I forgot my password and couldn't log on or was trapped underneath something heavy... for three months. Three months is enough time for the earth to sweep out a quarter of its annual circuit. That's like a gigantic piece of pecan pie with asteroid pecans. At any rate, has nothing blog-worthy occurred in that time? Where have I been?

I've been busy repairing my Christmas tree - no time for blogging.

I know what you've been thinking. "He's given up blogging. He's let ORANGEHOUSE die like so many other hobbies. This is the latest in a long line of atrophied fade-to-black beginnings without end. Gourmet cooking, check. Amateur astronomy, check. Playing guitar, check. Surely blogging is next."

Or has the novelty of blogging, this virtual exhibitionism of the soul, become so ho-hum, passe, and bourgeois that it no longer thrills me to display my vocabulary, my word smithery, to the bloggosphere? Have I lost the desire to pretend to be a writer, or to vent to the world my semi-anonymous DIY op-eds, or to string together cumbersome and often gyroscopic sentences with over abundances of hyphens, acronyms, and some other third things I can't remember at the moment?

Frankly, I think that which impels me to write has been short circuited by facebook.

Yes, I created a facebook account last summer and have been spending my blog time doing that instead. I admit it. But I regret it. Well, sort of regret it. It's kinda fun, but it's like junk food. It satisfies the stomach without giving any sustenance. It's a gummy worm, or perhaps a Pringles. Plastic food. Facebook let's you remind the world that you are still there, without saying anything of significance, or without actually relating to another person. Who cares if you're getting coffee, really? No one. But it feels good to shout it to your 375 (and counting!) virtual friends, "Hey everybody, I'm still alive!"

So I think my appetite for blogging has been ruined by the pre-meal snacks I've been munching on facebook. The appetite, the deep human desire, is the need to connect with people, to shout to the universe "I AM HERE AND THIS IS WHO I AM", and then to subtly whisper "do you Like me?" This appetite for approval and acceptance fuels bloggers and facebook users alike. Ultimately, it comes from the fact that we are persons (made by a Person). We have personality. We are personal. And we long from our deepest selves for the meat and potatoes of connecting with other persons out there who will remind us we are not alone in this thing called life.

"Alone and yet together like two passing ships" - Neil Peart