When I was a kid, my uncles and aunts and my gran would call from far-away places and all action in the house would cease as we passed the phone from person to person, sometimes picking up a second extension that rendered the first person mouse-voiced for the remainder of the call. Time morphed from bulbous drops of homework hell to the fast lane where every minute cost thirty-five cents.

We couldn't get enough of that long-distance.

When I was a senior in high school, my boyfriend went off to college, taking a little part of my teenaged heart with him. After watching me mope around the house for a few weeks, my parents allowed me one hour a week to talk to him on the phone on their dime. I would sit in our basement in the most private possible room and talk on my sister's leftover princess phone. My boyfriend told me about his new fraternity and how different college was and how long it would be until he'd be home for a visit. I sat with a travel alarm clock between my feet, watching the second-hand sweep as we paused, listening to each other breathe, and each breath cost so much money. To be able to communicate for only one hour a week was torture. We sent letters, but they took so long to arrive the news was old and all there was to do was caress the ink and know the other person touched this piece of paper, too.

Somewhere in there, along came cell phones and affordable long-distance plans. The cheaper talking got, the less I seemed to do it. I was quick to email and slow to text. Now I communicate via words and pictures on all manner of social media with my friends, with the world, with people I've never met. I show them who I am in many ways, and that can be amazing and wonderful and new.

But usually, I just miss talking.

Today I read a really interesting post on BlogHer by a blogger with spina bifida regarding what she shares or doesn't share on Facebook. She said people often tell her they wish they had her life because of what she shares on Facebook, but there is so much she doesn't share about her disease. She writes:

Because, God forbid I should choose the joyful family Christmas dinner in Puerto Rico as the venue for disclosing how I’ve totally slacked off on my neurosurgery stuff and am now desperate to schedule a follow-up with my neuro to find out the results of my MRI, which I had done before the holidays.

That got me to thinking about what I share, but more importantly, what I see other people sharing. This morning I got onto Facebook to check notifications. I almost never read my feed, because I feel like if I respond to one person's post that doesn't specifically name-check me then someone else might think I should respond to theirs. Of course, this is extremely self-centered of me to think people will care what I do or don't "like," but I don't think I would know when to stop. I don't *want* to spend hours on Facebook every day, and I don't want to worry about whether or not someone liked my profile picture change or what have you. In that way, Facebook is too transparent for me. I don't know who reads my blog from day to day, and I really prefer it that way. I don't want to wonder if I offended you or you've just been trapped under three feet of snow trying to get through the day for the last week.

Today, though, I read my feed for about five minutes and immediately was happy and sad for people (some of whom I barely know) and felt like I should say all the right things and click the appropriate emotion buttons and I got totally overwhelmed and just shut down the tab, pretending like I'd never opened it.

We share so much information now, and it's overwhelming to me. I've been thinking about why for several years now, and it's finally occurred to me it's because I get the news when I don't have time to process it. If I go to lunch with a friend and she tells me her dog died or she's been diagnosed with cancer or she's just in a slump, I'm already there, focused on her, with time set aside already in my schedule to talk. When I hear news, good or bad, I really want to respond immediately. I'm an extrovert and I really love being with other people. So when there is so much in the feed that there is no way on earth I'll ever be able to keep up, it actually makes my stomach hurt. Thus I avoid Facebook, only checking in every day or every other day to see if there's anything specifically directed at me, because I also have a fear of ignoring someone without giving them a reason why. Even then I find I've ignored invites to events or what have you because Facebook is the only place they were announced.

But that's not all of it. Not really.

I was immediately relieved when I closed the tab, because I noticed that in the five minutes I'd been reading, not only did I feel sad and happy, I felt jealous of some of the announcements and photos I saw, even though I know damn well we all edit the selves we present in social media and because of it, the standards for what our houses should look like or the presentation of our home-cooked dinners or the outfit we wear to Target go up and up and up. The standards I once thought applied only to the landed gentry suddenly feel like they're applying to me sitting here in my home office in suburban Kansas City with plans only to buy my daughter a new pair of tennies and maybe hit a family-friendly pizza place on the way home tonight. I used to feel really proud of myself for baking anything and this morning I felt guilty for making my daughter a Valentine's Day breakfast of chocolate chip muffins because it was a mix and I didn't put them on a cute plate and the muffin liner thingies had Christmas trees on them.

My fucking muffin liners aren't even good enough.

I blame Facebook and Pinterest. I really do. The television was always there. The catalogs were always there. The magazines, same thing. I didn't know if my friends were watching or reading those things, and if they dressed better than I do or cooked beautiful meals, I chalked it up to personal taste or income levels or interest differences. Now because I see everybody doing those things, I feel like it's the new norm.

Are seasonal wreaths really the new norm? Why does everyone have such cute boots? When did I get left behind?

Is it okay I don't care about a lot of those things? I mean, I care a little, but well, I still go to the grocery store in yoga pants and a hat All.The.Time. My cooking has improved dramatically since we started eating in as much as possible, but I'm really proud of myself just for using fresh vegetables instead of canned or frozen or God forbid insta-mealed. It doesn't have to look pretty, too.

I reject you, higher standards! I want to feel good about my not-matching wood and my non-mermaid hair. I want to feel like what I surround myself with can be just functional sometimes and doesn't have to also be gorgeous and flawlessly maintained. I have no servants who live downstairs, and I'm TIRED. 

I want to be good enough.

A week ago, my fourth-grader asked me about getting an Instagram account. I demanded she produce other fourth-graders who had one so I could ask their mothers about it. That ended the conversation.

Today, school was cancelled due to ice. She mused as I ignored her while working that she wished she could text with her friends.

I told her she's too young then went back to ignoring her while working. 

Then I sort of felt bad, so I started to suggest she call them and had to hold my tongue. Of course the friends she wants to talk to moved here from Iowa and their mother has a long-distance cell phone number, and our home phone doesn't get long distance, and I refuse to let her use my cell because I need it for work. So she can't call them. They live within walking distance and she can't call them. She could probably Skype with them, but that is now making my head hurt.

The world of 2013 is so complicated. 

She's not getting a cell phone. Not yet. She's not. 

Or Instagram. 

Or, OMG, SnapChat, that devil's tool all the kids like.

So far I've muddled along whistling in the dark about my daughter and technology. She has an iPod Touch and has had one for about a year now, but so far she only uses it to play games and FaceTime with relatives.

She's not getting a phone.

She's not texting.

She's going to talk. Or for God's sake, pass a note. Or be bored.

*headdesk*

(I just peeked. She found a new app and is now writing a story. THANK YOU, JESUS. Back to work.)

I wrote a post today for BlogHer admitting that I really can't stand being plugged in all the time -- so I'm not. I know many, many "normal" people who have no problem avoiding social media and email, but not too many people like me -- bloggers, people who work in new media. Am I the only one?

I have a confession to make: I have no problem unplugging. Hello, my name is Rita, I work on the Internet, and I frequently leave the house without my phone. There, I said it.

I started blogging in 2004 and remember vividly sitting next to Liz Gumbinner at the BlogHer Business '07 in New York City watching her use this crazy thing called Twitter on her new-fangled iPhone. I didn't really get immersed in Twitter until 2009 when I joined BlogHer and no longer had to hide my social media use when someone walked by. In fact, I had more of it than ever -- trying to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, internal IM, two e-mail accounts, my blog, everyone else's blog and BlogHer.com was something that took some getting used to. I started having those work dreams about being assigned to catalogue the Internet again, and that's when I knew I had to get a handle on it.

Read the rest on BlogHer.

No, not really. I'm writing this because I'm caught today in something of a 65-degree-long-bike-ride Sunday lethargic Monday. Why is it not still Sunday? 

Also, I started pinning things on Pinterest. I am not a design gal, nor do I have any fashion sense. I'm not really crafty. But I decided I would pin stuff that I find when I am doing my job that are awesome for one reason or another. I get nothing out of it if you look, but I'm telling you about it anyway because honestly, I can't think of anything else to say and wanted to move on with a new week on this blog. Huzzah! Check out the guy who made a giant portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. entirely out of Rubik's cubes, thoughts on writing from Ira Glass and more.

On Monday, I talked to a business communication class at UMKC about business communication as it pertains to social media. I told them the story about how a commenter on this blog tried to get me fired from H&R Block years ago. I told them about how I started this blog anonymously and how I evolved to using my real name as my username for pretty much everything. I talked about strong language and politics and privacy.

They asked why I hated Facebook. And I tried to explain how it is when you don't grow up with something -- how that degree of visibility feels different to me. I know anyone with a screen can read my blog, but I also know that most people I know or am related to in real life don't. Or at least not every day. But I know people who are glued to Facebook for hours every day, lots of people, including, probably, from the looks on their faces, these students who I can't help but think of in my mind as kids, though they were sophomores and juniors in college.

Standing there trying to explain how I came to my job in Internet publishing back in 1999, what it was like to pop in the bubble, how this recession is maybe longer but not so different from that pop if that was your industry, going from a career started with very different public and private Ritas to just one now, what it used to be like to have the people with whom you worked really know nothing you didn't want them to know about your personal life, back when you could go to work without everyone knowing who you went to high school with or what you got for your birthday -- it's not so much that I oppose this information being out there -- obviously I don't, I think you take the chaff with the wheat -- but it's different than what they're growing up with. It's been something of a hard adjustment that varies by personality type, but it's one thing to grow up talking to your friends in this way from the get-go and another thing entirely to have started one way and had it evolve before the rules were established. Exhilerating, yes, exciting -- my life would not be the same without this technology -- but also at times disconcerting. It must be what it was like to start life riding in a carriage and end it changing your oil. To start life with only a radio and end it with a flatscreen.

I barely restrained myself from saying "when I was your age." I do think I also restrained from explaining I had a typewriter in college. It was an electronic typewriter that had this new-fangled thing in the side called a disk drive, which I never used. 

Okay, I have to go to my job on the Internet now before I find myself reaching for dentures.

I started working with Erin, who's known in the blogosphere and perhaps circles other than Spain as Queen of Spain, in November 2009. We only got to work together for a few months before she had to go on disability because she kept having organs removed. I only wish I were making that up. Because she has lupus.

We never got to be face-to-face co-workers, since she lives in LA and I live in Kansas City, but I talked to her every day and we chatted about kids and balance and making lunches, and so it was such a huge shock when suddenly the chats were about hospitals and treatments and her having to pretty much stand still for a long time to get her health back.

She doesn't know I'm writing this, and she probably won't figure it out for a few hours because Erin's in Washington, DC, today, back in the White House where she belongs, talking policy and Twitter and all things social media. I'm watching eagerly from the sidelines hoping she feels well, hoping her meds hold, hoping she gets enough rest, hoping nothing goes wrong.

I hope it most of all because Erin deserves to play professionally again.

There are all kinds of people, and most people I know aren't crazy enmeshed with what they do for a living, but Erin is one of those people who makes me want to try harder because she is so incredibly passionate about what she does and what she believes in. I think in many ways though lupus is not the best thing to happen to Erin, Erin may be the best thing to happen to lupus, because if anyone can get the word out, she can.

BlogHer '11 is in a month, and I'm signed up to give blood at the BlogHer '11 blood drive. I'm hoping I can finally, finally hug Erin instead of carrying a picture of her head around on a stick.

 
(Get your own damn badge this year, lady.)

I'm so happy for you today, Erin. I hope you're feeling your power. Because we are.

Yesterday and Wednesday I was off from work to add a Part II to my novel (fingers crossed, it was a specific request). On Wednesday, even though I forced myself to ignore my work email, I checked my personal email and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of responses and responsibilities and lost almost two hours.

Yesterday, I took a complete and total Internet hiatus. No blogging, no email (!), no Twitter, no Yammer, no Facebook, no LinkedIn. I did text with my sister a little, but I also actually spoke to her on the phone for more than an hour. And last night I called my parents and told them a bunch of things I'd forgotten to tell them in the mad rush of email that is usually my life.

My life is email? Yeah, it kind of is.

At the same time, I'm reading Super Sad True Love Story in fits and bursts, which is a novel about a bunch of people trying to stay young forever who spend their lives completely immersed in little personal data devices that hang around their necks.

A while ago, the little angel asked me if I loved my phone more than her.

The last two days while I've been off, she's gotten off the bus at home instead of after-school care, and we've set up the sprinkler and invited friends over to run through it. The weather has been glorious.

Today I'm back online, back at work, back on email. And I'm determined to not become a Super Sad True Love Story character.

But it's hard, in this world we live in. It's hard.