are you sure?

Lately every time I click to opt out of things like not entering my mobile number for updates by phone, allowing a specific site to access my email contacts to "link me up", or to no longer receive unnecessary emails, I am prompted by "Are you Sure?" Of course I'm sure because I, unlike very few people these days, believe certain information should be kept private. How is it that so many people bitch and moan about privacy, yet maintain a  membership or registration on almost every possible social networking site that exists? More than that these are the very people who feel the need to fill us all in on every_single_detail of their life. While I'm inquiring, I'd also like to know when Facebook became a place where people felt the need to clue the community in on things like their upset stomach, their baby's diaper rash, the fact that they just woke up and are going to work and a whole deluge of other ridiculousness. As I age I notice a desire to fade ever more into obscurity, if only so I can avoid the barrage of nonsense from the people who "put it all out there" on a daily basis. A few days ago, I began deleting from my FB "friends" list because most of these people are only acquaintances of proximity. Most of them I've not spoken to in years, and I'm pretty certain that many of them would never consider befriending me virtually or otherwise if they knew the real me. Over the next few months it is my plan to make this list of people even smaller. With that and a recent change to my phone plan to get rid of texting, I will eventually only be reachable through email and phone calls. It's seems email is becoming ever more obsolete, and phone calls are becoming just as much of a rarity. Written letters are for the Stone Age peoples. This space here is becoming less important to me as I've turned more to journaling, yet I can't bring myself to close the account. So for the time being it remains "out there."

Never before have we (the United States trumps all other countries) been so wired for communication, yet so uncommunicative and isolated from each other. Not only are we isolated from each other, we are ever more aliens to ourselves. Children are being diagnosed at younger and younger ages with depression, bi-polar disorder, and whole plethora of diseases that for many could be avoided (that's a whole other post). I've always felt somewhat differently than much of the mainstream even when I've engaged in the trends that have come and gone. I had a blackberry for six months and I felt no more connected to the world, my friends or myself than I did without it. I still continue to engage with Facebook, but it is no where near as prevalent in my daily life as I've seen it is in others. I'm not bragging, I'm just fortunate that a curtain was lifted. I'm reminded of a quote by Ludwig Borne  "Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth." I've downsized and downgraded, and it feels great to be disconnected in this way, thus more connected to my inner-self. It is my goal for  2012 to become more conscious of my inner workings and more connected to what Huxley would call the "Mind at Large."