In Which I Sound Like A Dinosaur

So D is probably the most well-read he’s been since we’ve been married. He gets a handful of public news feeds. He follows his Facebook feed, populated by well-educated friends he’s acquired throughout his life who now reside all over the globe. He twitters for his health district. He’s been interviewed on a news station about what he’s learned in Washington and lobbied in Congress. I, on the other hand, finally got myself some alone time and went out to Barnes, where I picked up a “year in review” by TIME and found out there was this major security leak, that bad stuff is happening in Syria, and learned what a hashtag and a selfie is.

I don’t currently find motherhood a naturally communal experience. We still go to BSF, where I see some mothers, and I still have occasional play-dates with friends from church, but it’s all in the setting of relative chaos, and I don’t know anyone deeply enough to have meaningful discussions about the topics I think about these days: parenting styles and how they differ. How to improve the kid’s diets or try new foods. New parenting ideas like deciding not to brag about our kids, taking them out for regular dates, or whatever else we are processing. What we think about homosexuality. Finding friends after thirty. Toughing out ill-fitting clothes until the last ten or so pounds from the pregnancy are off. Whether it’s worth investing in the 529 college fund.

So D suggest I look into social media, since that seems to be a way a lot of folks are finding community these days. I did find a mommy blog (momastery.com) that had a great assortment of inspiring and humorous entries—sometimes it’s just great to read something and know you aren’t the only one who hates having to sing “one more” bedtime song when you’re feeling mad, or who recognizes that marriage isn’t all a cakewalk. D and I were inspired to consider blogging more.

But then I forayed more into tumblr and twitter and all that, and just got totally weirded out by how much meaningless stuff is out there, things that seem like a waste of time. And even getting into all this took the whole afternoon. As a person on the outside looking in, it seems odd how flippantly meaningful terms like “friend” and “like” are thrown around. It seems strange how a lot of social media breeds a culture of self-absorption that doesn’t seem entirely healthy.

Well, this probably all just makes me sound old. I remember when I didn’t see the point of texting, and now I text more people than I email (which is somewhat sad—I feel like we’ve lost the art of epistolary writing—or any writing at all). So who knows (though I do get chills thinking of our kids texting one day and am stubbornly keeping them from my iPad and into library books). I do enjoy this blog for what it is: not a bid to get a lot of readers or likes or pins or whatnot, but a reminder to put what I process onto paper occasionally, and a way to preserve for the future a snapshot of what our lives are like now.