Visit First, Text Last

Last night I had an acquaintance tell me that she loved reading my blog and that now she feels like she knows me as well as she does a very close friend.  She told me this as a cautionary tale because she said that someday she might be diagnosed with some horrible disease and she is going to call me up and tell me to get right over to her house to care for her children while she leaves home for treatment.

She is not the first person to tell me this.  Another acquaintance said she felt somewhat like a voyeur reading the blog since she really did not know me that well.

You people need to stop worrying.  If I write it and post it, you are allowed to read it.  People who know me will attest to the fact that I will talk to almost anyone about anything.  The fact that I am writing about losing weight, a subject almost no one wants to broach should be proof enough.

I am not an expert in much, but I do have a passion for making community, and I don’t mean community coffee.  I love meeting new people, finding common links, learning new things from them, introducing them to others, blah, blah, blah.

But in our Tweet first, Facebook second, text third, email fourth, call on the phone fifth, actually go see a person face-to-face last world it is harder and harder to actually become a community.  All this isolation communication has got to be contributing to our unhealthy lifestyles.

This is all rich coming from someone who is communicating to you through a blog.  I would greatly prefer you all to come and sit in my kitchen and let me talk to you and tell you stories there.  But since this community of readers is spread far and wide it makes it more impossible.

What these acquaintances that have some sort of guilt about reading my personal musings do not see is that, all you people who read the 500 words I write everyday, are acting as my collective therapist.  I don’t need to pay someone $250 an hour for me to tell him how screwed up I am.  I have you.  And if you recognize any hint of yourself in what I write maybe it helps you too.

Most of what I write is too true to make up.  It is my real life, crazy as it is.  Once in a while I do fabricate an example person so that I don’t out some actual horrible person.  My friend Mary Eileen and her family read the posting “It’s great not to get recognized” where I described a woman who always said, “Nice to meet you” even though we had met many times.  Mary Eileen said they sat around the dinner table saying they knew exactly who she was.  When she asked me I said, “OMG, is there really someone matching that terrible description?  I made her up.”

So if you are that person I described, I don’t know who you are.  If you recognize yourself in my postings you are not alone, you are just human.  It is OK if you feel like you know me; I have posted 136 blogs about my struggles and myself for the last 136 days.  Please know that you are my community.  If you want to come and sit in my kitchen you are welcome to do that.  I may blog, but in my world I go to visit someone first, call them on the phone second, e-mail them third, text fourth, Facebook fifth and almost never tweet.