Alone in my blogging room.

I'm in a strange sort of mood this morning.  I've been semi cut off from posting/writing my travel log since it's pretty image heavy these days and our internet is going through a major slow spell.  (Actually we think it's being throttled due to all of our big downloads of movie rentals and TV shows.  Just watch it be back to normal at the beginning of the next billing cycle!)  I could write the log and post the photos later, but honestly, I just don't feel like it right now.  I'm not sure if I'm a little down, or just tired of plugging away at the same old stuff.  Today I have been thinking about what I do here, and why, and what it does for me.  Or doesn't do.

Thanks to this blog, you all get a daily look (internet permitting) inside my brain.  You see my excitements, my disappointments, my frustrations, and you learn about all the crazy things that rattle around in this noggin and otherwise don't come out.  Most of you probably know more about me and how I think through reading my words here than you ever have known or will know of me face to face.  Many of you have said how connected to me it makes you feel, and how grateful you are for that.  But sometimes I wonder. Other than a dumping site for my brain's content overflow, what do I get from this?

It's like I'm in a room with a two-way mirror.  All of you are piling into the viewing room on the other side of the mirror.  You see everything I do while in there.  I can control what I show you, but your viewing position allows you to examine the intricacies and find my short-comings, if you care to.  On the other hand, you can also smile when you see me smile, you can look at me and wave hello.  But all I see, when I look back, is myself.

Occasionally some of you comment on my experience by yelling through the glass.  I can hear you, but it's a small bit of contact, and allows me no real vision past the glass.  Some people have declined to enter the viewing room altogether, which is fine by me, but then they wonder why they don't also get a look in.

I think even my husband benefits from this.  Some days, George and I have very little contact.  He's gone all day as usual, and is very tired when he gets home.  By the time Regin is asleep, so is he.  Such is parenting.  But, no matter, he can always check out my viewing room during slow periods at work.

But while it may get more and more crowded in that viewing room, on the other side of the glass there is only me.

You are given the opportunity to keep up to date on everything that goes on in my life while I am away, but I'm falling very behind on yours.  A couple of you also have blogs I can look at, and I receive some updates via Facebook.  But when I look at those updates it's strange to see how much of your lives are just going on and things happening without me.  I don't have daily accounts to look at, so photos of trips and get togethers are sometimes surprising:  Oh!  I didn't know they were going away for the weekend with friends.  Sometimes it almost feels like we just weren't invited!  Ha!  So silly I know.

But I think this is what you get when you put maybe a little too much of yourself out there.  There's bound to be a lack of reciprocity.  And even if I had them, I'm not sure I could keep up with that many detailed daily blogs.  I'm surprised by those of you who can keep up with mine.

I could stop blogging, but then the connections I've been maintaining with you all will become even more tenuous.  I don't think I will stop blogging anyway.  I started it as an experiment but it's become an almost sick compulsion.  And now that I've gotten to the stage where I tell you everything, what will I do when I go back home and I no longer have an excuse to? 

It's funny.  I initially condemned blogs, particularly the daily journal kind, as self-indulgent attempts to stand out in an ever increasing sea of people.  The web connects us with everyone on the other side of the globe, but in doing so, makes our world bigger rather than smaller, and we become less and less significant and connected with those around us.  Now, I'm fully absorbed into the blogosphere I didn't understand.  I'm here with the rest of the bloggers:  compelled to write and jumping up and down, waving my arms, screaming, "I'm here!  Look at me!  I matter!"  And yet, when I'm looking at myself from this side of that two-way mirror, I'm thinking, "I don't."  And even though I imagine myself to be a modern-day Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen blogging my "Out of Malaysia" (with hopefully a little less of her cultural superiority), I'm nothing more than just another lonely blogger sitting in my room, pulling words out of emptiness and hoping they mean something.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself.  It's not that.  I am just as comfortable with solitude as I am at a crowded party.  Sometimes, I just feel like I need to break away from this crap and spend more of my time on real life.  I suppose that's why tech-free vacations are becoming so popular.  But my addiction (to blog, to Facebook, and to reading blogs/Facebook) may just be too strong.