Thursday, April 28, 2011

A Fresh Start

Now feels like the time to start afresh. So I started a new blog and I intend to write all sorts of things on here.

Speaking of starting anew, I recently quit facebook. This may seem drastic to some, but ultimately, I became disillusioned. My ideal facebook experience would be one where I keep in contact with my main friends. Tops, I would imagine that would be about 30 people. But, for awhile there, I was pushing 200 friends on my list. It started to seem like some alternate reality to me, and not one that coincided with my real life. This is not to say that I didn't like all those people. In fact, I knew every one. I just didn't like the fact that most of the people on my list are not people that ever communicated with me. Which got me thinking--if I wasn't on facebook, would people keep in touch? I know that many would--mainly the 30 or so (tops) friends that I have in real life. But the others? Something tells me that would be unlikely. And despite what facebook was telling me, I knew that it wasn't true. Yes, I have 200 people that I know. But I don't have 200 friends. Nor would I want 200 friends, not really. I have always been the type of person that craves close relationships, not casual acquaintances. All through grade school and high school, I had one best friend, and a couple more close friends. That number expanded in college as I was exposed to more and more people, but it never expanded past five close friends. It still hasn't.

But my disillusionment with facebook was not wholly founded on my "friends in real life" number vs. my "friends on facebook" number: it was also founded on a disappointment in myself. Maybe disappointment is too strong a word, but suffice it to say I became rather surprised at myself. Every day, the first thing I did when I got up in the morning was check my email and check my facebook. When I got home from work, I did the same thing again. I would look around on FB, see what people were up to, look at pictures of their trips or their pets, comment on the occasional status update, write one of my own. Before I knew it a half hour had elapsed. Or an hour. Recently,  I started thinking of this habit that I had formed, and I questioned what else I could be doing with my time if I weren't ensconced in the facebook world so regularly. Could I have written a song, perhaps? Certainly. Could I have begun work on the painting I want to do for my friend? Most definitely. Could I have written in my journal, begun a new book, written a letter to my family? Yes, yes, yes. But no. I was whiling away my time on facebook.

So I took things into my own two hands, which, it turns out, is where things have always been. And I changed my ways. Cold turkey. I deactivated my account, and at this point, I have no intention of going back. I have too much I want to do with my life, and now is the time. Now is the time. Our time on earth is short, and as Theodore Roosevelt said, I want to "spend myself in a worthy cause."

Perhaps you think that I am taking this all too seriously, and if you do, you are certainly welcome to your opinion. I do take my life seriously and I do take my time seriously, and it comes down to the fact that I want real, true, in-person friendships and I want time to make music, write poems, read books, act in films, and generally be an artist. That is what I'm here for: friends, family, love and art. I by no means begrudge anyone facebook--I think it can be a miraculous site, full of life details and fun photos, great friends and things to do. I just want to discover my friendships in a different way, it turns out. And I want to keep working toward my goals, which is easy to forget when we get sucked into the day-to-day.

This morning, I got up and checked my email. Today is my day off and I was looking forward to a day of relaxation. No one had emailed. My mind went directly to facebook, and then I smiled. I'm not on it anymore! So what to do? Well, let's see. I watched an NPR live performance of Josh Ritter's. I read Josh Ritter's entire blog, which, by the way, has some great advice and insight for musicians to take a look at. I made a list of goals: tomorrow, one month, six month, one year, two year, five year, and ten year goals. Ritter had recommended this, as well as working backwards, so that you begin with your ten year goals, and thus what do you need to do in five years to get to your ten year goals? ...and on down the line. It was refreshing and exciting, and he's right. When you do the list backward, the tomorrow and one month goals seem much more manageable. I am gearing up for my future.

I intended to write lyrics for a song Vern and I have been working on. I couldn't locate the living room recording we had done just to keep the melody in mind, so writing lyrics might be difficult. But I did locate the recording of one section, and I think that's enough to start with. That's what I'm going to do now.

Oh! And I began a blog! Stay tuned for the nitty and the gritty.

Love,
Clare

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