The view from here and now

I realized something this morning as I lay in bed unable to get back to sleep.

My internettery is all about contact and community, about not feeling alone and lonely. I started blogging out of curiosity, but kept on because of the community of readers and commenters that developed. As I became ever more deeply immersed in SL, the "hotter" and more immediate community feeling there took up more and more of my time and attention. It also shifted my "day" later into the evening and night. I used to be a very early riser a few years ago, but I couldn't tell you when I last saw the sun rise, unless you count the time I played Dragon Age: Origins until after 5am. The reason I stopped blogging regularly is indeed, as somebody once asked in a comment, that I am spending in Second Life the time that was previously my blogging hour.

The reason I stopped reading blogs is different: as fear and unhappiness took the upper hand in my life, nearly two years ago now, the pressure that I felt to read — and to comment insightfully and with compassion and warmth — came to be too much for me emotionally. I simply didn't have enough emotional resources to spread around, or so it felt. And for what it's worth, I was retreating in SL at that time too: there were evenings when I'd just log in and literally stand around alone in a park, unable to gather the strength to find and talk to anyone.

My absence from your blogs is not a sign of disinterest, dear friends. On the contrary, it is in a perverse way the proof that they and you were valuable to me, because I did continue to read sites that I didn't give a damn about. That was OK because there was no emotional load in them. (That is also why I was able to follow you by reading your RSS feeds: there was no personal involvement in that, no pressure to reply.)

Most lately, of course, much of my compositional energy has gone into Twitter, the internet-literary equivalent of eating peanut M&M's while a fine meal lies on the table before you: superficially appealing but essentially worthless. And most lately, I've been writing about my "coming of age" in SL and the meditation group. I might be posting those here, but not for a while and certainly not in their current form; if anyone is interested to read them drop me an e-mail at the address in the left sidebar.

It's been a long dry season, my dears, but there are signs of change. Thank you all so much for bearing with me, for enduring my silence and neglect with such patience and forebearance. "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion."