Dear Anonymous D

Dear Anonymous D,

I'm sure many ILI readers read your comments and think we are friends. They would probably be shocked to know that you stumbled upon my blog randomly. But I am thrilled you have.

This is the beauty of the Internet. The rueful randomness. The fact that two total strangers can bump into each other in invisible terrain. The fact that with the stroke of a key, words and ideas and emotions and confessions can travel from here to there. And from there to here.

We share Kyle and a passion for our kids. We are both experimenting with a new and delightful drug: honesty.

In my darker hours when I wonder why I am doing this, why I am blogging, why I am putting myself out there, I think of you. A person, a successful and good person it seems, who has taken time out of her busy days to read what I have to say. And to say something back. And when I think of this, I realize that it is all worth it. Very worth it.

Thank you for your web friendship. What do you say we talk life and law over a glass of wine one of these days?

Insecurely yours,

Aidan

Dear Facebook

Dear Facebook,

It's one thing to mess with me, but another thing entirely to mess with my mother-in-law. Grammy is a good person. And when I sent her that photo album you were kind enough to allow me to create, you insisted she join your site to view the album.

All she wanted to do was see pictures of her darling grandchildren. Do you blame her? So, she joined. I'm not sure what happened next, but I blame you. You (or some not-so-nice spammer-type) sent friend requests from Grammy to all of my Facebook friends. Very sneaky. Not nice. How dare you?

Grammy would never do this. You've put her in a tough spot. Everyone makes mistakes, but I'm not sure I will forgive you for this one. Or whether Grammy will.

Insecurely yours,

Aidan

How Many Friends Do You Have?

This isn't an easy question to answer these days. Because (too) many of us have Facebook friends and Twitter followers and then, if we are lucky, some "real" friends. You know - the living and breathing kind who smile and sob and tell stories and sip coffee. The best kind.

The NYT Idea of the Day blog explores the evolving meaning of friendship in this contemporary landscape of social media madness in its piece What Do Friends Mean? The Week in Review staff maintains that the concurrent rise of social media and decline of the economy has prompted us to ponder the shifting psychological, social, and economic faces of human friendship. And, according to the NYT, what does this inquiry leave us with? Confusion.

Confusion is right. Online networking is complicating what was once a more simple, old school process of making friendships and then maintaining them. Furthermore, many of us are admittedly using Facebook and Twitter and other social media tools for professional purposes - whether to blast our authorial voice into the world or to hawk a product or a website. Are the people we encounter while joining in this cyber-conversation true friends or fellow pawns in a big bad game of self-promotion? Both, I imagine.

Furthermore, the NYT piece suggests something alarming and sad; that the current recession is ruining true real-world friendships. Slate author Emily Bazelon states, “Because of the downturn, friendships between two people whose Saturday-night spending and overall class status used to calibrate precisely have now turned into trickier relationships between one person who still has money and one person who doesn’t.” A troubling statistic? Per the NYT, Science Daily data indicates that we lose about half of our close network members every seven years. Cheerio.

How do you define friendship these days? Has the current economic climate compromised any of your good friendships? Has your adoption of online friends and followers had an impact on your relationships with your real world friends?

A Scrumptious Saturday Spread

Enjoy this lavish link buffet, a sweet and savory start to your Saturday. Chock-full of choices and calorie-free, so click away! 

Hilarious Heather Armstrong welcomes an univited house guest in the 34th week of her pregnancy: Fred The Protruding Belly Button.  {Dooce}

Bad mommies unite! A defense of the modern phenomenon of Mommy Confessions.  {Hybrid Mom Insider}

Nanofiction?  Twiction?  Cell-Phone Novels?  Technology is changing what we read and how we read it.  (Where does that leave us writers?) {PC World}

We humans are literally wired to help each other, but what happens when compassion fatigue sets in? {Daddy Dialectic}

Reality is not always roses.  Not every Mother's Day sentiment fits squarely on a pastel Mother's Day Card.  {NYT's Motherlode}

Want to up your happiness and lower your blood pressure?  Then get your hug on.  {The Happiness Project}

Bristol Palin as abstinence advocate?  And Britney Spears should be the voice of virgins. {New York Times Op-Ed}

You know the economy's in shambles when a promising young lawyer turns to prostitution.  {Above The Law}

Spiderman has a son?  I'm ceaselessly amazed by couples who manage to conceive one of each!  {Celebrity Baby Blog}

The Addiction Fiction?

I haven't been on a real vacation (think: sun, sand, sangria) since before Toddler was born.  But I do go on a number of staycations everyday.  Where?  The Internet.  And on these little trips, I learn things.  And meet people.  And have conversations.  And write little stories. And see new things.  

And then I log off and I'm right back in the comforts of my own home. Without a sunburn.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

So, apparently I am the prime example of the isolated, rookie mom, who turns to the world wide web to find a sense of connection, of belonging.  Uh oh.  I am a member of an ever-expanding population of what are being deemed Internet addicts.  Lisa Belkin explores this phenomenon over at the Motherlode in her eye-opening piece New Moms and Internet Addiction wherein she showcases fellow mom and former blogger Rachel Mosteller's recent Parenting article. Mosteller examines just why young moms are susceptible to that blue glow.  She identifies Three Reasons Moms Are Addicted to The Internet:

(1)  "I feel like I'm going crazy" 

(2)  "I can be a different person"

(3) "I have so much to do!" 

Do these sentiments sound familiar?  Of course they do.  But you know something?  I'm a Mom and I can make lists too.  Here is my list, admittedly more nuanced, of half-baked points that I think Mosteller and so many others are ignoring:

(1) Spending hours on the Internet is probably like drinking too much coffee;  it is not particularly good for your health. But calm down. It's not the Swine Flu.  Sure, it might give you that false buzz of belonging that will fade, but so what - it gets you through that day.

(2) Most of us do not -- and Mosteller admits as much -- resort to drugs to keep us awake longer so that we can surf the web.  Sure, there are those that are truly, and problematically, addicted to the Internet (but per my Internet research (ha!), there are also pour poor souls out there addicted to tanning, and talcum powder, and crunching ice)

(3) So much of the dialogue out there in this seemingly "half-empty" age focuses on the abuses, on the negatives.  The fact that we are zoning our kids out or neglecting our day-to-day duties.  What about the fact that the Internet allows us to reconnect with lost friends, or research a chapter of the book we are writing, or engage in CONVERSATION about things that matter to us -- albeit in the nebulous territory of cyberspace.

(4) This Internet v. Reality is not an either-or proposition.  We are not always embracing anonymous buddies on the Net at the expense of engaging with the real world out there.  Plenty of us have friends, the living and breathing kinds with names and families and jobs and problems, whom we speak to and see on a regular basis.  And (gasp) we also like to wander around and gather bits and pieces of serious and silly information, or philosophical insights, or ideas on the Web.  

(5) Have we ever thought that we might be smarter, savvier, better-informed parents and people because of the Internet? We are not all online seeking up-to-date news on celebrity baby names (although that is sometimes fun).  Where else can I research potty-training and dairy allergies and preschools and Plato? 

(6) I learned how to write a novel on the Internet.  After spending a short time at a law firm and realizing quickly that that was not the life I wanted, I took a risk.  I decided to dream big.  I said: I am going to write a novel.  I took online courses at Gotham Writer's Workshop where I interacted with students from all over this great nation and world.  One of my Gotham professors Russell Rowland, himself an esteemed published author who lives in Montana, became my fiction mentor.  And my beloved novel BlackBerry Girl would not exist without the encouragement and e-editing of this Montana man (whom I have never met in real life).

Now if there is truly an addiction to surfing the Internet that is spreading like wildfire among new moms and old moms and non-moms out there -- and maybe there is because I am quite adept at fooling myself and cooking up rationalizations for my own actions -- this rookie blogger secretly hopes you have it.   Or get it very soon :)

The Dora Dilemma

National Turn-Off-Tune-In Week began Monday.  Apparently, I missed the memo.  But thanks to Lisa Belkin over at The NYT's Motherlode, I'm now aware that for the past three days, it was my mandate to forego the flatscreen.  Oops.

Truth is even if I had gotten this message (one endorsed by a bevy of authorities from the American Medical Association to the American Academy of Pediatrics to the National Education Association to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports), I probably wouldn't have listened.

Why?  Sure, the numbers are alarming.  Children are watching more television than ever and, alas, as Belkin notes, attention spans are shrinking as waistlines expand.  She offers a few lovely stats: (a la TurnOffYourTV.com):

• Number of 30-second commercials seen in a year by an average child: 20,000.
• Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful conversation with their children: 38.5.
• Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680.

No, none of this is good.  But I will continue to let Toddler and Baby watch as much Dora as they want.  And I will also continue to spend many more than 38.5 minutes per week conversing and cuddling with them. As Belkin so eloquently states, "I have come to question rah-rah, all-or-nothing statements for subtle situations."  We are always eager to point a finger, aren't we?  I'm no expert and I'm not quite sure what the problem is, but I don't think we can blame it all on that poor little bilingual girl with the bowlcut.

Toddler knows the alphabet, and how to count to a very high number, and what a chinchilla is.  Why? Because we are stellar parents? Maybe.  Because she is a language and learning sponge? Perhaps.  Because I let her tune in from time to time?  You betcha.  

Now, I'm not advocating that all kids should be able to watch TV all the time.  I know there are abuses here.  There are plenty of issues that need to be looked at.  But I do advocate, as Belkin does far more compellingly than yours truly, that we get past this black or white, turn-off or tune-in, all-or-nothing, one-size-fits-all way of seeing the world.  It's all about the greys, baby.

Short and Tweet?

The slow trickle continues.  A few days ago, I sent my Agent the link to this blog.  And held my breath and let those trademark tidal waves of worry buffet me: Is the site too edgy?  Are the topics alienating?  Does anyone care what I have to say?  Thankfully, a response came in short order.  She likes the blog!  Now this is incredible news as she is at the helm of my very rookie literary career.  BUT.  She had a comment.  And said comment was something along these lines: Your posts should be shorter.  People are on Twitter these days and they don't have tolerance for longer essays.  And though a fan of the longer, more meandering, philosophical essay, I knew one thing and knew it immediately: she was right.  And another thing hit me: maybe I should check this Twitter thing out? Perhaps there is no better way to practice spewing exceedingly short and meaningless bits of personal information into the atmosphere? 

Maureen Dowd's Op-Ed To Tweet or Not to Tweet got me thinking that it might behoove me to start tweeting if not just to experience first-hand another seismic shift in technological tectonics.  Is Twitter just the latest and greatest avenue for celebrity chatter and self-aggrandizement?  Is its popularity problematic evidence of society's shrinking attention span? Dowd asked Twitter's founders (whom she deemed quite charming unlike their invention): "Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?"  And they laughed it off.  But is this tweeting thing a laughing matter?  Not sure yet.  But if Oprah and Agent deem life tweetworthy, then maybe, just maybe, I can be convinced.  

How's that for short and tweet?  No, it's not under 140 characters.  But it's a start.

[Okay: indulge this philosophic-meanderer in a few more characters, will you?  An Earth Week Inquiry: Why is it that so many  modern technological toys (think Apple, Mac, BlackBerry, Twitter) are named to conjure natural goodies -- like lush fruits and sweet birds?  Is this meant to distract us from the fact that these are decidedly unnatural gadgets?]