Gone Quiet

The above is a blatant reference to one of my favorite episodes of 'The West Wing'. The term is used to refer to an American spy submarine that has entered enemy waters and has stopped sending or receiving signals. It has gone quiet.

And that is sort of how I feel at the current moment as I sit here at the airport waiting to board my flight home. I always go home during semester breaks and regardless of how many assignments and work I have pending, such days find me filled with happiness of the homecoming kind. This time however, I haven't told anyone that I’m coming. Coming home today that is. My folks think I’ll be turning up tomorrow. My Australian friends know the vague details - that I left Canberra at a certain time but they don't really know when my flight from Sydney is or what i'll be doing in the intervening time. No-one really knows my exact location as of right now. Of-course this has happened before, we don't always know the exact location of loved ones but I'm consciously registering this particular instance. It's a strange kind of feeling and one I've rarely had before. The beeping coordinates in my life made up of all the people I care to keep informed are still there on my map, I’ve just disappeared of theirs.

I'm sure it would be two parts liberating and one part ambivalent were it not for the fact I am currently in an Airport terminal. And I as I think about it some more,  I’ve haven't REALLY gone quiet and truth be told, it's sort of a relief that my existence is still being tracked. I'm still sending out some signals, even if it is to the blogosphere.This realisation is followed by another - that my title to this post is now totally redundant! Here's to not thinking your blog entry out :) But hey, at least it sounds cool. And whoever said consistency has to be maintained from start to finish in a written work has never been inside my brain. Back to my wonderful Commonwealth Constitutional assignment where I will continue to cause more havoc with inconsistent bullet points and unformatted headings. Oh, the horror! 

So here's to falling off radars...not really(see above) and if only for a while :)

Being Part of Each Others Reality

I recently de-activated my Facebook account on a whim. And also because my conscience was having a good go at me for procrastinating on FB instead studying into the wee hours of the morning. I only meant to go off for a couple of days over the course of which I'd somehow get bestowed with a superhuman level of self-discipline that would allow me to use FB in a constructive manner. As I am living away from home (New Zealand), FB has become an integral part of my life. This is how I can dip into my friends lives back home because lets face it - FB has become a running narrative of life's unfolding drama, complete with thoughts, pics and if you're lucky a public wall post. All this is unfolding front and center on a cyber stage and you can't keep up unless you click 'update newsfeed'.

I've been dead sober off FB for about 3 weeks now. And WOW does it feel good to not be so connected anymore. It also got me to thinking, how social networks have become a barrier in terms of accessing each others reality. Sure, there are running narratives of latest thought processes, jokes, mood swings, the latest fad, the latest purchase, and the latest check-in but this is only a figment of our reality. I somehow can't help but think that FB has to some extent reduced us to representing our reality within the context of the provided framework. And what's scary is that we seem to be ok with it. Ok with not knowing the expression on someone's face when they say they're ok, the intonation of the spoken word, the reality of a good laugh with a close friend, the feel good feeling of actually receiving letters in the mail. How we are ok with not actually calling each other up anymore because we are up to date with each other's lives thanks to FB. Now, I don't mean to say that we've all turned into zombies who do nothing but sit on our computers all day and hardly have any real catch-ups with friends. But I do believe that we have sacrificed a level of authentic communication through social networking.

I'm so glad I did this. It's good not sharing "what I’m thinking about" anymore. It's good to receive a personalized email or phone call asking me this instead. And it feels even better to do communicate in this way with others. I doubt what I’m saying is on any level ground-breaking. But it is something that I have felt keenly over the past couple of weeks. This could all be just a rant written by someone who was high on the system for a long time and pontificating through a jacked up sober daze. One thing I do know for sure though - Ain't nothing like reality like reality itself!