Because I Totally Didn't Have Enough to Do...

Since I've been unemployed, my life has been pretty hectic. I thought that I'd have all kinds of time to catch up on some projects that have been sitting for a while, but of course it hasn't played out that way. I've had some freelance opportunities; I had some e-books to wrap up; Tori's schoolwork is at a point that requires more input from me than usual. And then, of course, there's the whole looking for a job thing, and the fact that there were quite a few boxes still stacked around my house from that move we never quite finished.

So today, I did the only sensible thing and started another blog.

That doesn't even surprise you, does it?

Email Thinking

This morning, my email included four consecutive emails from a local friend, followed by four consecutive emails from a friend I've never meet. Continuations, all of them, of previous conversations--eight subjects, all addressed in the space of twenty or thirty minutes.

It got me thinking about the way that email changes our communications. I don't mean because it's in writing (though we do often express ourselves differently in writing) or because of the delay in response or any of the other things that are obvious to the format. No, the thing that caught my attention this morning was the changing of gears, the quicksilver slipping from a response about the stress I'm under at work or someone else's problem with a friend to a funny comment in a forum or a cute story about my daughter's friends.

In real life--or, I should say, in the flesh--that slippage would never take place. I'd never look at someone who had just expressed grave medical concerns to me and say, "I heard the best joke this morning." I'd be taken aback if I said to someone, "You know, I'm under so much pressure at work that I actually think I'm going to quit without another job" and she said, "What do you think of this color for my kitchen curtains?"

But we do that all the time in email, shifting from religious philosophy to political debate to dinner plans to pictures of our kids to anecdotes to financial problems and back again every time we click "send" and move on to the next. There's a big advantage to this format, and one I've always valued--it allows time for reflection, to digress and return to the core point, to expand a conversation in different directions without losing the original thread. That doesn't happen when we sit down to talk--if we branch off in a particular direction chances are that the original thread is lost, or that it has evolved significantly enough that we never return to follow any of the other possible offshoots and sideroads it could have invited. Not so with email; I can go back in a day or two or even two weeks later and answer again with a new thought or a different side-route. I can digress and easily refocus just by going back to the original email.

This morning, though, I started to wonder whether that very thing that allows us to dig deeper somehow keeps us shallower, if revisiting something in small bites over and over again just isn't the same as immersing in it. When a friend tells me that she's worried about her marriage and I respond with the best thoughts I have, but then immediately respond to another comment about her horseback riding lessons, am I really giving her issue my full attention, really feeling it instead of just thinking about it? When I intersperse theological analysis with plans to meet up for lunch and the frustrations of chaperoning a high school football game, am I really opening myself up to as much insight as I otherwise might?

I think not. And maybe it's not all about the format--maybe it's just as much about the way the world is moving so fast that everything happens on the fly these days. But whether it's a cause or an effect, it suddenly seems to me to have the same effect on conversation that hyperlinks had on our ability to read and digest longer, more in-depth writing, and it's a little alarming to me.

Every Writer Needs a Personal Blog, Right?

I know, I know...this is number 6.

But it has a purpose. Really it does.

If you're thinking that this is one blog too many (or maybe three or four too many), I respectfully request that you blame Jenn over at Thrift Shop Romantic. You see, Mark Stoneman started a personal blog and announced it on Blog Catalog, where there was much rejoicing because Mark is a very educated, insightful contributor to discussions over there and we're all very interested in hearing what he has to say on more varied subjects. But then Jenn said, "it's funny how much of our lives we partition into blogs", and I suddenly had no choice but to start a new blog.

You see, I'm changing jobs. In fact, as I write this, I'm technically unemployed, having left one job on Friday and scheduled to start the new one on Wednesday. In many ways, I'm really sad about leaving the old job, which was fantastic in more ways than I can articulate here (I'm sure more of them will emerge as time goes on). But in another way I'm really excited, and not just about the new project I'm taking on. I'm excited to be reintegrating my life.

For two years, it's been pretty tough for me to do anything except work during the week and be with my daughter on the weekends. It was a great job and I have a great kid, but there was no life in between--and no easy transition between the two, with a 3+ hour commute making for 12-13 hour days every weekday. I hadn't seen most of my friends in months. I hadn't hung curtains in the townhouse I moved into a year and a half ago, and I didn't do much writing anymore.

So I had five blogs, and they were just like my life: one about writing, one about religion, one about social issues--anyone who read just one of those blogs might have come away with an entirely different impression of me than someone who'd read just another of them. That's the nature of the niche, of course, but "partitioning" my life is the last thing I want to do about now. So I decided to create a center point, a personal blog that reflects all of those little pieces of me.

It might be really boring. But at least it will be three-dimensional.