connections

I can’t believe it’s almost May. Scary that I gave notice on our little rental house today – scary because it means we can’t live here anymore after May. Scary because I have to figure out how to move us again, though this time not so far. Scary because if anything falls through we’ll be homeless. I know, I know, not literally – we’ll know well before May 30 if we need a plan bee. Exciting though too for obvious reasons like we’ll get to move into our OWN house! And paint one wall green for sure. And I’m going to New York in May to visit my sis and her family. And it’s more like summer every day which I LOVE even though there were some flurries today. Oh! And in May I think I’ll get a new mobile phone with a data plan!

Re: phones. I just got the phone bill from when I was in Canada ($0.59/minute with Jesse and I deciding whether or not to accept the seller's counter offer on the house) and it made me think of way back when long distance telephone calls were so expensive. Back then, living in the dorms, I couldn’t call home to talk to my family, or elsewhere to talk to friends, because it was too darn expensive. Not everyone was on email. Even when I nanny-ed, in a real house, I would save my calls for Sunday night after 6pm because it was a nickel a minute. Now, with the interwebs and social media, I can type half as fast as I can speak (which is turtle speed compared to how fast I think, right?) and send any thought to hundreds of “friends” on Facebook with no incremental fee. It’s been awesome to stay in touch with San Diego folks since we moved. And to connect with new folks here in Denver. Still, it’s sad that I connect less often with close friends who are absent from Facebook as I do with distant friends who are active on Facebook. For the purpose of nurturing personal relationships, I honestly think this social networking thing has gone a bit too far – it’s too easy to degrade a rich relationship to one based on the off-handed sharing of mundane crap. Obviously I have mixed feelings – I appreciate and respect online social networking, but it's also not my favorite.

I have to remember to see people, call people, write people, email people (that seems like it shouldn’t belong, but it’s a reality) and FOCUS on people. Limit my mundanity (apparently that’s not a word, it has a red squiggly underline on my screen) to my marriage. Just kidding. And set my privacy settings so that I don’t constantly message virtual strangers and even distant friends. All of this especially given my (soon) new mobile device with data! I hope that my conscientiousness on this will serve my relationships – close and distant – better. Because that’s what it’s all about: who you love and how you show it.