Tags: facebook, Ship of Fools, wibsite, friends, rambling, church, blogs
Date: 05 February 2009 18:21:15
The world continues to shrink and collide. I remember when I first started getting involved in online communities, talking about my "real life" and "virtual" friends, and then getting really startled when "real" and "virtual" worlds started to coincide and overlap, and "virtual" friends became as "real" as "real life" friends. People from the wibsite and Ship of Fools turned out to know/have grown up with random people I knew in real life (especially people from madchurch, bizarrely), and since being on facebook it's been amazing to see how many people have unexpected mutual friends with me - a few people I know from online are friends with a friend of mine from uni, whom they know from GCN, for example. I've had several facebook exchanges along the lines of "where on earth do you know x from?!" - one madchurch friend saw a comment from someone (whom I got to know through a friend of HD's) and messaged me to say "I was at a Crusader camp in the 80s with someone called Jane Bloggs*, I wonder if it's the same one", so I messaged her and it turned out they were indeed already acquainted but hadn't been in touch for 20 years, and then they spent a fun evening reminiscing together and catching up via facebook messages. I've also had a couple of "real life" friends come up to me and sheepishly confess that they think they've been reading my blog. One of whom as lots of people already know now has her own blog here too - we first met in the early 90s, and I think at first we were both a bit freaked out by the real/virtual overlap.
Now it's my various virtual worlds that are colliding. I'm really delighted that Katya, one of my most faithful and regular commenters over on my Glasgow photo blog, has started to comment here too. I can thank Ian for following her comments on Glasgow DP and starting to comment on her blog for her getting to know the wibsite a bit.
Every time I experience one of these mini-world collisions I get a bit of a jolt. A pleasant one mind! I think I didn't realise until I had lots of friends in lots of different places coming together the extent to which I choose what I reveal about myself in each different context. I think all of them are authentic expressions of who I am, whether it be the creative, spiritual, pseudy, or whatever sides of me, but I always wonder if those who know best the spiritual side of me will be surprised by the slobby side, or those that know the creative me will be put off by the more spiritual, even though it's all me. I think I'm rambling (Shurely not - ed), not to mention getting a bit "me, me, me" on you - anyway really all I want to say is despite the momentary discomfort I think the coming together of these different worlds is fun and helps make the world both a smaller and bigger place. Yay!
In other news, working at home hasn't worked at all. I have no self-discipline whatsoever (she says, like that's news). Tomorrow will be better (actually maybe I'll go into work after all). Sigh.
* Name changed to protect the guilty, obviously!