For a time, I was prolific; a condition that all too often crossed the threshold into sporadic. Now, as evidenced by my absence for months at a time, I have fallen into the ennui-bound realm of nearly non-existent.
Such has been the life cycle of this blog.
At the urging of a friend, I began my observances of life on the now defunct Yahoo!360 as a way to meet people via a medium that afforded itself greater latitude for personal expression. Many of those connections have stayed with me to this more traditional blogging incarnation and the social web of entrapment that is Facebook. They have read my rants with understanding; laughed at my stepping into the horsepiles of absurdity; relished my intelligent discourse on issues of the day (Ok, that was a bit self-indulgent…so sue me).
At the onset, blogging proved itself to be a catalyst for freshening my mind's eye, keeping perspective fresh and new ideas flowing. It spurred action on my long-ago-shelved novel. Dormant characters once again found their voices. My fingers tapped them into renewed and re-energized existence, only to find them tossed aside when faced with distraction.
On Facebook, I found the quest for pithy and obtuse status updates became more important than the emotions and conversations churning inside of me. Now, on a daily basis, I find myself lost in a sea of "friends"—those newly found and those I've re-connected with from the distant past—who more often than not know as little about the "real" me as I do about them. I find myself longing for more and yet powerless to change this reality. It is as if social networking has alchemized into my own personal Kryptonite, sapping the life right out of me.
The inability to scrape beneath the surface has left me bereft. Words barely seep through the sieve of apathy. It feels like I have abandoned my voice. Sent it packing on a cruise through the Parse-ifal Sea, where Word Sharks and Grammarcudas circle in for the kill, attracted to the scent of indifference.
It makes me wonder if the voices that have been screaming for so long to rise up like a revolutionary mob have been nothing more than a F.A.D. (Fraudulent Authorial Dream)? Only time will tell.
2 comments:
So, I had to look up like 7 words out of this entry . . . so I would have to say that you still have that voice and are able to breathe life into it through each keystroke.
I understand the entrapment of crackbook, but tying the blog to my crackbook has made the blog stay alive, and share it with those that might not have found it otherwise.
I miss your entries my friend, so I hope you don't wait another few months to enlighten and challenge my thoughts (and vocabulary).
Take care!! jj:)
lOddly enough, I've been a member of facebook longer than I've been blogging. Which is one part kind of a shame, and on the other part, interesting. I rarely use facebook, if at all, as I find it to be something of a vacuum that takes up hours of time and isn't in any way productive. That's what Twitter's for, and I like Twitter infinitely more.
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