Leave Me Unconnected

Is it a sign of aging that I just don’t want to be so connected to everyone? I don’t want a page on Facebook. I don’t want to Twitter my every thought. I don’t want to walk around with that clunky earpiece so I can take phone calls every waking hour. I’m just not that important, and come to think of it, neither is anyone else I know.

Walk around any major city today and all you will see is the top of people’s heads because almost everyone is walking with their heads down interacting with some tech device. What could be so important? Am I really missing something here?

I’ve tried Twitter. I think I made two entries before I realized I had nothing to say to that nagging question, “What are you doing now?” I felt pressured to lie and make something up. Who cares if I’m working at my desk or doing laundry or reading a good book? Unless you are making first hand discoveries on a new planet, who really cares about your mundane day to day moments? Some days, I bore myself. Why share it with others?

I tried Facebook last week. I signed up at 3:00 PM and went out to my niece’s birthday party at 4:00 PM. Within that hour, everyone at the party who was “connected” knew I had signed up and welcomed me as their friend in Facebook. When I returned home at 8:00 PM, I had about thirty messages from other people asking if they could be my friend. Only one or two of those people were already my friends, and the others, well, I wish they had never found me.

I started reading the inane comments on my Facebook wall and responded with an assortment of verbal replies that I will sum up nicely here in two words: Who cares?! I saw my future and it wasn’t pretty. Was I going to come home from work and waste hours responding to my Facebook friends instead of donning my apron and cooking the evening meal, something I really enjoy?

Cooking is a sensual experience for me. I relish the colors and textures and scents of the foods. I unwind and clear my head of the day’s tensions as I chop vegetables and meditate. I sing and whistle to my parakeet as he jumps around his cage, pokes his bell and answers me with real tweets.

And when my husband walks through the door, the smell of a home cooked meal makes him smile – a real smile – not a colon followed by a parentheses. We sit down to dinner and have a real conversation – not a 140 word limited electronic quip. I let him concentrate on his work during the day, but when he’s home, he had better twitter my fancy and concentrate on me.

Call me old fashioned, but some technologies are not worth keeping up with. My real friends know who they are. And all those other “friends” will remain unconnected. And that’s just the way I like it.