I have been staring at a page with subtitles and a couple of graphics for about 30 minutes now. I click on an icon, a word or two appearing on the screen on top of my desk. I feel like a an ink-less ballpoint pen...now what? What I should do next? Do I write down my intimate thoughts in the way I really wanted to do on the inside of my little pink diary with the tiny gold key? I had received it as a gift from my grandmother on my 16Th birthday. I tried to record everything I could remember about each day. I was faithful to my new best friend, but not brave enough to be really "truthful" just in case someone found it. Originally, I had plan to write everything down so that I remembered being a young when I got as old as my mother. I would have a daughter one day and because I would remember how it was being young, I would be nicer to the daughter I was going to have one day. I wondered if I should write down "everything". Even as a teenager it felt like I had lived far more life than I really had wanted too.
For sometime now I have been wanting to do create(make or hate) a "blog". The word sounded cool but 21st-Century-scary to me. Was it like a weird cyberspace boogieman (The Blogger Monster from Wireless Spacecom) of some kind? After all, I had ventured out and wrote a note in spacefacebook (farm games, anyone?). Maybe this note was my blog beginning...ummmmm. I finally got comfortable with hiring of friends and family to work my farm. As our farms expanded, I started hiring less fortunate strangers from the townmarketing place to harvest my crops. I learned which crops where the best money makers and planted them within times that I would most likely be sitting at my computer with my fellow farmers. It was more profitable to create a network of people with shared interest. It was fun, but as my farming assets grew and I finally got my big house I found myself seeking more.
By now,I had become a mafia head, race car driver, the captain of a pirate ship and even a sonority girl with the skinniest "avatar" (another new word and creature) who only vaguely resembles me, but is one of my alter egos who purchased a boyfriend and pair of shoes for each day of the week. In all colors and shapes too. I finally had discovered the "real" mes. Multiple personalities or diversified business woman. Whatever the case, I found myself trapped in fish tank games and hooked.
I had told myself over 100 cyberspace hours ago that I was not going to get addicted to such silly games. After all, I am too old to become a "gamer" (another cyber-word). I had gotten attached to The Sims that turned into two more generations of Sims. I talked about my farm so much that my sister, who is retired and loves gardening, became interested in facespackbook and the farm games. My sister claims to know nothing about computers, but started beating the stew out of me in points within a short time online. Not only with the farm games, the fish ones then she turned me into a gambler (without money) with new games. We are hooked! It seemed like she was online 24 hours a day. I know that, because it seemed that I was on it too. Friends and co-workers only talk about their lives with dirt less plantings and harvesting crops. I could dig in the ground without getting dirty. Plant and harvest veggies without my back hurting or allergic reaction to the outside. I have made millions in farming, owner of several restaurants and islands, not to forget from street racing and robbing avatar gangsters and other pirate ships. My elbows started getting callouses and black pressure spots on them from leaning over my keyboard in the middle of the night. I did not care! Then I started seeking new ways of getting more "friends" who shared in the same type of compulsions as myself. My cyber-sister turned me on to how to do it. Sister had over one hundred "friends" on her pages from Russia, Switzerland and Japan (Russia?). Then my grandchildren started out-scoring me on my own games and sending emails taunting me and bragging about how much better they we at playing my games.
I still was hesitant about the entire-world knowing all-my-business. After all, I am a product of the sixties and we don't trust anyone. The age of big-brother originated as part of the baby-boomer era only to ripen with conspiracy theories who have not yet come to the terms of the age. Small cigarettes and loud music made 2001 future space movies reality showing us that even in space, our species had found favor and specifically our country. When I was in 4Th grade, we had to pick a name of a child from one of those "certain" countries to write letters to as part of a class project. This project excited me to no end. I wrote hundreds of little one or two sentences and putting them in envelopes waiting leave my country. I now suspect that my small attempt to contribute to world peace found themselves out of the postal waters of the USA despite more than stamps need for the airplane to delivery. I had felt dejected for so many years wondering why my friend never wrote me back.
So, what do I do with this? How much is too much?
