Other Lives

Today has been an epic day. I had to stack hundreds, perhaps even thousands of brochures into cupboards. As a result, I have two significant paper cuts on my hands. They are so significant, in fact, that I have to call them paper wounds. But that, as I am sure you will be relieved to discover, is not what I want to talk about today.

Blogs are my hobby, or at least one of them. By which I mean, not just writing, but reading blogs. Lots of blogs. I have lots of spare time at work with affords me with unholy amounts of free time to spend in the world of blogging. As such, the collection of blogs I check in on regularly has grown considerably. Blogs of artists, mothers, authors, chefs, photographers, florists, decorators, pastry chefs. Awesome people that I would know absolutely nothing about except for the fact that they are posting their thoughts/pictures/recipes on the world wide web. And it's awesome. Inspiring even.

I think many commentators on some of the phenomena we've seen with the rise of the webnet point out the drawbacks of "online communities." People get a sense of intimacy with people they know in a strictly digital capacity and lose touch with or fail to form real life relationships. Maybe I'm being oblivious, but I really don't see that being a problem for me, probably because I am not extroverted enough to start discussions. I feel like blogs are a lot more like reading people's memoirs for me than making invisible friends. I clearly differentiate the difference between online and actual relationships. I don't have a sense that any of these bloggers are my friends, in fact all of my friends are very much people in my day to day, real live, walking around life. So, I think I have escaped that peril.

But there is another trap I think I may have slipped into that nobody had the foresight to warn me about. Blog envy. Not just envy of another person's online self-expression space (although some of them are freakin' cool) but a kind of envy of the sort of life that is expressed in those words and pictures. After a long stint in front of the computer, it can be tempting to sigh over the fact that I'm not a watercolorist living in Cape Cod, a florist in Manhattan, or a French expat pastry chef with years of restaurant experience under my belt. These people are cool! I want to be cool too.

I understand and try to avoid the dangers of vicarious living, but I think there is one considerable benefit in all this. I think at this stage in my life, I am continually embroiled in the crisis of deciding who I want to be and I think exploring the options of possible future selves could someday resolve that conflict. And this medium could be exceptionally helpful since one is always discovering new kinds of people in the blogging world and, since I'm not wholly sold out to any of the options I actually have before me, maybe my true calling is out there, still waiting to be uncovered. Only a blog away...