maybe I am reaching out again
Thanks for the idea :)
I prefer other games to Poker and tend to avoid the money competitions as I wonder if the primary purpose of many who go there is to make money, rather than socialize. I'm not looking for competitiors, I am looking for friends. Team games and sports are much more to my likely over cut-throat me against everybody else games.
But poker for pennies (or loose change) among friends, that can be fun. I'll look at the site more closely when I have more time and appreciate any idea that might bring more social life into mine.
And to you and all reading here:
I've been trying to find time and ways to fit in some more social life into this life I loosely call mine (often I wonder , what with business and personal obligations, "who's life is it, anyway?", if you know what I mean). Signing up at meetup is one of the ways. I get email from dozens of local groups, but time to read and respond (no less attend) is scarce (partly due to habit as emailing and going out on weeknights is not part of my lifestyle and it seems to me that developing more social life requires some lifestyle, or at least schedule changes... like do I want to stay in and browse the web, write a blog, watch TV, vege with my roommates, or enjoy a nap tonight?... usually, I answer "yes" to one of those, but what's that saying about the same choices producing the same results?)...
I am not new in town, I've actually been in Orlando most of the last (counting on fingers and toes) 17 years (shuddering now). In recent years I saw friends move away while work and a sedentary, stay-home lifestyle replaced what was once a much more active and social life. I must have gotten a good night's sleep tonight as I am up early and looking at email and, wow, responding (as if I'm waiting on the world to change, aye?... ah, this sort of mocking myself is sometimes the only amusement I have left)...
I think I am about to write a lettear of introduction or something... I wonder if I actually will and what I might do with it after I do... yes, I do tend to think aloud in written words, rather often, actually... whatever I write will probably end up in my blog, as that has become a substitute for social life lately... maybe a lot longer than lately, now that I think about time...
Thanks for the inspiration to do something with my brain besides work and pondering my navel... I hope you found a smile while reading and if you are relating, feel free to respond any way you'd like. I'll do my best to reciprocate. May today be a wonderful day in your world :)
I left in the typos cuz they probably have some profound meaning (especially the second one, but we won't go there just now, right?)... and I even got a response already in my email... brief and non-commital, but still a response suggesting some reading of my website...
I'll be back in a bit...
posted by candoor at 11:59 AM
4 Comments:
Funny thing about the internet
We rarely tend to come across many people that live just across the road or uptown.
I dunoo why? I guess the great advantage is that it enables us to find people with similar interests, not always near and mostly very far.
But you would think that local bloggers aside from blogging around the world (Status Quo?) would also be able to find more local 'blospheres'
But even if you go to an Internet Cafe, you won't get a conversation, as most people are probably blogging or chatting with someone on the otherside of the globe.
Teenagers definitely have more fun on chat lines with local (school?) friends, or texting inane messages about meets at Big Macs, whereas as we get older - other than lets get together to watch Enland-v-South Africa @ Rugby in Paris, oe secret text messages to some hot date, there is really no call for online chatting - or is there?
What's cool about blogging is that you can put down your thoughts, and read (or even edit) them later, and visitors can comment as and when they choose if they so choose. And some clearly like tp go on. So it's time for me to say ciao, and wish you a great weekend, whatever it is you get up to.
so true, so sad in many ways, at least when this form of communication substitutes for other more personal, immediate, and intimate forms of interaction (which is has for me and probably does even more for many)...
that is one reason i avoid chat programs... i do not need to become even more conditioned to look for interaction in this sedentary position...
it does go a long way to satisfying my love for words, writing, reading, and corresponding though...
back in 1995, i spent some time in AOL chat rooms... i still have fond memories of at least one person there, but we were never more than names on a screen...
in 1997, i spend a great deal of time in a Yahoo chat room called The Asylum™ and found a few wonderful people far away (Perth, Australia; Seattle, Washington; Aukland, New Zealand)... those are the three i recall most warmly, even recall names and things about their family and lives...
i also did a lot of chatting on ICQ when it first came out... and Missy, one of the people in my offline life today, was met through ICQ back in 1997... i think she was 15 at the time and looking for a daddy and I still play that role in her life (much to the chagrin of my wallet)... i stayed with her and her mom a little while in 1998 and when i returned to Florida...
homelessness in that period took me away from Yahoo online space (i no longer felt like the slap-happy bopping bouncing cartoon character "anonanonanon" or even the closer to the core me "childinside" i portrayed in The Asylum™ and i returned and found myself in newsgroups... similar to comments, except threaded like bulletin boards, i indulged my loneliness and desire to help others by spending a lot of time in a newsgroup specifically focused on loneliness... became one of the regularly there... even got caught up in the drama of the moment...
less immediacy, less conversation, less chance of having to discuss my impoverished (physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and every other ally) state of being...
i also started blogging in 1998, simultaneous with all the other stuff... maybe earlier, even, and that was the beginning drifting away from chat, IM, boards, and newsgroups... it was my way of trying to keep in touch with people as i spent less time online... it did not work...
i found that even those who claimed to adore me and whined when i was gone and cheered when i returned did not follow me over to my blog... apparently it was the atmosphere of the communal interaction, the "room" and not any specific individual that everybody was there for...
i never found the same interactive energy/satisfaction and adrenaline rush i found in chat or even in newsgroups, but i settled into this online lifestyle mostly because my computer could not keep up with the advancing software technology and then, it because comfortable to play at a much lower energy level with much less activity or opportunity for connection...
i became increasingly lazy...
apathetic, complacent, ambivalent, and fat in my internal thinking, external movement, and integrated emotional life...
i let my abs go so flabby i do not have sense memory of being physically myself... and this is where i stand, or rather, sit today...
dumb...
numb...
lonesome...
on my bum...
yes, on my bum, but at least i am no longer a bum, i gave up the carefree homeless lifestyle for the casual night shift lifestyle back in 2001 and then gave up that comfortable low-responsibility life and now wear collared shirts and pants and shoes to work (next level is a tie and i am resisting that like a noose, literally) and sit in a director's chair in a private office shared administrative assistant though) producing reports and proposals that develop and improve the systems and turn the engines of a small psychiatric hospital...
monday i'll be at the marriot in oklahoma on business...
life comes full circle once again as this is where i left off back in 1990 when i ran away from the administrative bureaucratic madness for life of total leisure a piece of swampland in Florida... pity i did not have internet back then (i settled for snail mail and advertised in a dozen magazines (Writer's Digest, Rolling Stone, Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Redbook, Cosmo, and lots of others) as i publishing newsletters and a small magazine called Paper Fantasies to an interactive crowd of thousands)...
and all this to say, yeah, I agree... and I suppose there's a touch of been there, done that in this ramble, but more, it's a part of the renewed impetus to introduce myself to strangers again... so thank you for getting caught up in that and helping to inspire more memories to pop up...
you too, find wonder and fun in this weekend... weekends are made to be great :)
what, no 2oo1-2005 history? there go my eggo...
the 2001 to present history continues and you know you have a starring role in it when it's finally written :)
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