A large task that I’ve never actually done before is the integration and updating of my various contact lists. With G1 being a google phone, transferring my main email address from a yahoo account to a gmail account seemes like a good choice. I’ve used the same yahoo account since early 2002 so I don’t make the choice lightly. Even knowing there are ways to keep my yahoo account and get updates and sync my contacts and other various tasks, I’m still going to spend the time and the effort to change over.

Already there have been excellent benefits to the new phone. When I changed to my MDA phone three years ago, we simply took the SIM card from the old phone and put it into the new phone. All this time I’ve had new contacts in alphabetical order on the top of the list and all the old contacts I had from before the MDA were in alphabetical order below that. The folks with numbers I should have had memorized were a pain to scroll down to.

With very little reading or researching on my part, I was able to figure out how to transfer my contacts from the old SIM card in entirety and magically they were all in order and pretty on the G1. Right away I was able to delete several numbers that I haven’t needed in over three years. Shortly after a few brief phone calls I was able to delete more obsolete numbers.

Then the exciting part; logging into my pristine Gmail account I was able to transfer the phone’s contact numbers into my Gmail contacts. I consolidated a few obvious issues where I had a separate contact for cell numbers and home numbers. Excited from the unexpected ease of use I began composing an email and or text to send to my friends and family to further update my info.

That’s when I was chilled by the shadow of the mountain of the task I was undertaking. With over 150 contacts in my yahoo account and 178 facebook contacts, who was I going to request info from and who would I give all of my personal info to? And who the hell were all these people. My OCD kicked in and I spent an hour just going through the facebook contacts.

Instead of labeling each of the “friends” on facebook based on how much I like them or talk to them presently, I decided to categorize based on how I originally met the person. This seemed to work best and I was able to apply relatively broad categories to most with one exception. The results were interesting.

Six people were known to be fake or alterego accounts. I grouped several individuals into a miscellaneous category because they were all spouses or siblings of individuals. Here is a breakdown of my facebook friends:

• 1 Spouse (The one exception to the “how I met them” rule)
• 6 Coworkers, neighbors & roommates
• 6 Alteregos
• 8 Friends through my spouse
• 8 Misc
• 13 Friends through college or high school friends
• 20 Friends met through MMORPG’s or Blogs
• 24 Family or Family of my spouse
• 29 People met specifically for facebook applications
• 63 Friends from college or high school (35.4%)

Although these numbers may only be interesting to me, I did learn some things that might broaden the interest.  I was surprised on a couple of levels. For one thing, I actually know most of the people on my friends list. I could go over the list again and make note of the people I’ve met in person, the people I’ve spoken to via phone or web chat, the people I talk with semi-regularly via chat or some other interpersonal labeling system but I don’t need to.

I know most of these people and a small handful of them that I don’t know won’t be on my friends list tomorrow because I’m sure they won’t notice. Once in a while I would look at the number of people on my friend list or notice a facebook friend that had hundreds more then me and wonder about it. Obviously you can’t have meaningful interaction with 200+ individuals. What’s the point of having that many friends on facebook! Really, what’s the point of facebook at all?!

Which brings me to my second realization from this exercise in self indulgence; I clarified for myself my purpose in having a facebook account at all. As an aspiring writer, I used to think facebook might be constructive for networking. Although it might be good for networking, I have not used it as such and I’m glad that I haven’t. I have a facebook account because I like people. I especially like that I contact people as much as I want and when I want.

Facebook is a way for me to socialize with a wider circle of friends than is available in the purely physical community. My virtual neighborhood is global and it doesn’t matter the price of fuel or how hectic our varied schedules are. The stereotypical aunt who makes you watch her slide shows during your semiannual visit is a thing of the past. I intentionally log in to check out pictures posted by family and friends. I look at each one, sharing in the joy of the captured moments.

The 16.3% of the people on my facebook list that I’ve met purely to participate in facebook applications with have occasionally proven to be interesting and multidimensional people that I’ve enjoyed chatting up. The preexisting common interest in the pleasure of mental masturbation via simple RPG’s and the exchange of themed JPG’s is sometimes more of a connection then working in the same office building or having kids that go to the same school. Although facebook applications are just another time sink in a long list of time eating endeavors I indulge in, I’ve felt fortunate to find a few people that I resonate with.

The final observation I took from compiling this list is a reminder that a year or so ago when I started visiting facebook on a regular basis, I was trying hard to overcome my slight issue with agoraphobia. At the time, I tied a mental red ribbon around my finger to check in on myself to make sure I wasn’t exacerbating my issues by being pseudo-social. The irregularity of my self exams occasionally concerned me. However, I’m sure now that I am much more myself and more comfortable with the world thanks in part to expanding my circle of friends and experiencing life beyond my safe zone. I even answer the phone now.

With more to learn about my new G1 phone and much more work to be done on bringing my various contact lists current and synchronized, a good night’s sleep is in order.  My final thought before posting and shutting down for the night is that I am so fortunate to be living and experiencing the future where miles don’t matter and time can be manipulated.

As I wait for my first cup of coffee to reach my brain, I’m sipping my second and watching the April 13^th episode of House on Hulu. I’m also brain storming with pen to paper about what half dozen tasks I should do today from my list of several dozen.

It’s only a little after 8 in the morning and I’ve had more thoughts and motivated actions then I normally have this time of day. Lately I’ve been going back to sleep at 8 a.m. because I have only slept a couple of hours or I haven’t slept at all. Since I went to bed at 2 a.m. last night and got up around 6, I should be more tired. I expected to be. And yet, here I am, awake and more mentally productive then I have been in weeks.

Even now I’m cleaning off the clutter on my desk. The clutter seems to accumulate around the edge like frost used to accumulate in my college days freezer. Sometimes it seems like my home is a giant complicated version of one of those picture puzzles with squares that you shift around using only one open spot. Except that in my house there layers upon layers of those little squares and I have no clue as to what the final picture is supposed to look like. I just shift and shift, avoid for a while to ease some frustration, then shift and shift again.

According to parts of my Feng shui book that I actually read, the clutter in my house represents issues in my life. Or maybe the clutter caused the issues. Going to go check which it actually is, either in the books or online would be another way of avoiding taking care of what I need to, today and tomorrow and the next day.

Over the last ten minutes I found four forks and a spoon on my desk and I got chills over the last ten seconds of this House episode. The latter was nice. I’m looking forward to next week’s episode.

The former makes me realize that the clutter on my kitchen table illustrates that I’m stuck on my “organize the pantry” project. I also have clutter on the dinning room table because I’m a big fan of putting the clothes in the washer and dryer but not a big fan of folding and putting away. Every day my kids are a day older and I’ve lost an opportunity to spend half an hour having sit down dinners with them. I spend too much time here in this filthy, disordered nook of my office. I’ve metaphorically crawled under a rock. I hide here, sustained by the consuming of time and the avoidance of danger.

Now that coffee number two is in me and coffee number one wants to leave, I think I’ll leave this refuge and assault random targets on my agenda. If I waste another moment on prioritizing my agenda I risk something shiny, safe and meaningless catching my attention.

Despite statements made by protestors that they represented the people and that they did not in fact represent a political party, researching further quickly proved to me that the movement is primarily fueled by a handful of conservative groups lead by current and former Republican leaders. I may have easily figured out which way the protesters hung, but I had a difficult time finding out what the real issues were and what the big deal was. Do people just like to dress up, paint catchy insults on signs and teach their pre-schoolers about the American right to protest?

I’m a thirty-three year old, lower-middle class, Caucasian, mother of two and a housewife; I don’t trust the news, the government or mob mentality. I don’t trust the current education system that is educating my children, nor do I trust the education system that supposedly educated me. Add to that our justice system, insurance companies, people who are positive they are right… The list of things I don’t trust is longer then it used to be.

You know you’re a liberal if…

I guess I’m a liberal because I don’t have a problem with gay people getting married or making out or anything in-between. I also believe that early abortions are not murder and shooting an abortion doctor is. I’m probably a liberal because I think that we shouldn’t go to war if we don’t have to and it really bothers me when young Americans who are in the lower or moderate-middle class sign up for the military under economic pressure. It especially sucks when they are maimed or killed or compelled to live with the cost of having a job that includes maiming and killing people in wars that we don’t need to be in.

I must be liberal because I think it’s hypocritical to get all worked up and label folks as “unpatriotic” if they do not blindly support the president in everything that he does–when that president is Republican and has promised to kill the scary heathen terrorists. When a Democrat president comes along and spends their hard earned money on welfare babies and bank bailouts those same folks grass-root organize, misremember history and teabag protest. I am morally offended that Americans were out in the streets today comparing Obama to Hitler. These same Americans believe they are patriotic. They keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means.

If liberal is as liberal does, does it make me liberal to think that it’s odd that conservatives went nuts on John Kerry’s military background. They questioned how patriotic he really was and whether or not he was really a war hero. Those same conservatives will go nuts if one of those liberal communists don’t unconditionally support the statement, “All troops are heroes, support our troops.” Are they assuming that we know they don’t actually mean democrat troops who might run against republicans or gay troops or troops that speak out against unnecessary war?

I’m leaning to the Left because I think that the color of your skin or the homeland of your forefathers does not affect a person’s value. I can’t hang out at conservative parties because I feel it’s an American’s right to have whatever religious belief they feel like having as long as they are not harming others; furthermore, it’s an American’s right to not have to live by someone else’s religious beliefs.

It’s possible that I believe in evolution because I was educated by the liberal manipulated public school system. I could be brainwashed and deluded into my liberal ways. Since I also went to bible study and read the bible and the supporting study guides, I decided to actually have an opinion on the evolution vs. creation debate. Everything that the scientific community labels as truth is subject to evolve (pun intended) as new information is added to the equation. We will never know with 100% certainty the answers to the universe. It’s like cosmic CSI. And yet, the educated guesses of the scientific community make a hell of a lot more sense then some creation myth. The Old Testament’s version of the beginning is either a metaphor or fiction.

Believing that teenagers have sex because they’re horny teenagers and not because they have access to condoms is probably a liberal belief. Equally liberal is my belief that kids should get accurate information about the effectiveness of birth control and the actual consequences of unprotected sex. Accurate sex education can prevent death. Isn’t that more important then the possibility that lies designed to scare kids into not having premarital sex might work for some?  

The presence of testicles and/or the absence of ovaries should not be taken into consideration when determining the head of a household or the person who get’s to make the final decision for a family. I’m not a feminist because my foremothers did all the hard work, and yet I still believe men and women are different but equal.

Is it an oversimplification to assume liberals believe in global warming and conservatives don’t? I know I’m not qualified to speculate on global warming. Whether or not global warming is real or if fluctuations in climate are a natural cycle influenced by our orbit and the Sun, what could it hurt to make positive changes in how we treat our air, water and land? Are we seriously more concerned about the thousands of jobs dependent on big oil then we are on our kids getting cancer from the air we breathe? Why aren’t we as Americans united in wanting to advance technology that is environmentally responsible and that we can be proud of as a people? Aren’t there jobs in the direction of producing in a way that doesn’t disregard the condition of the planet?

I’m not liberal enough to passionately go out and change the world and meet other like minded individuals. If individuals are like me, they aren’t out there changing the world in organized groups. That being said, people like me are probably not in churches or monitoring conservative media outlets to make sure all of their “for this” and “against that” are in order.  

Zealots scare me. There are no bumper stickers on my car expressing any of my personal beliefs because I’d rather not have my car damaged by an angry, entitled conservative. I believe it is possible that if I did have Left-leaning propaganda publicly displayed on my vehicle and happened upon a conservative zealot on the day that they’ve decided to make a difference that my personal safety is at risk. I’d never express any of my views in a public setting surrounded by strangers. Conservatives have more guns then liberals.

I can’t be a part of the Conservative Camp because all of my beliefs and opinions are subject to change and adapt over time. I can’t be Right, because I don’t believe I’m right about everything.

Even though any one of the above topics would inspire a real conservative to put me in the “liberal” category and ensure that all thoughts I share are worthless and potentially dangerous to the conservative crusade, there are also reasons why I’m not a true liberal.

I don’t hate Republicans. I’m a fan of capitalism (although I don’t think we have pure capitalism or pure democracy and I’m not afraid of a sprinkling of socialism). I’m okay with eating meat even if I think we can do better about how we slaughter animals. Even though I don’t want to personally go out and shoot a deer, it doesn’t bother me if people like that sort of thing (as long as the animal isn’t endangered).

It may be an American’s right to express free speech, but I don’t think it’s right to put down a person’s faith. If a celebrity makes a habit of saying blasphemous things for shock value to increase their notoriety or bottom line, I have occasionally chosen not to watch the shows or movies or purchase products they endorse. I don’t compel others to do the same; it’s just my personal right to choose who my dollar endorses.

The internet is my virtual happy place even though it is saturated with lies, half truths, spun manure and hate. Every flavor of view and “news reporting” that is out there is tinted with various degrees of bias and un-truth. When visiting these article sites, I can usually tell pretty quickly when they are excessively conservative or predominately liberal. When the conservative sites seem ridiculously biased to you and you tend to find the liberal sites to be somewhat believable, you’re obviously a liberal. I must say that even if I know the conservative sites are skewed, I’m not unaware that the liberal sites are spun as well. You can’t believe anything anymore. It’s like April Fool’s Day every day.  

To those conservatives out there that got outraged way up where I said that I don’t think that early abortion is murder and have continued to read at the risk of your blood pressure rising, I’d just like to point out that if abortion hadn’t been legal for so long, there would be a lot more liberal babies out there potentially messing up the vote. You think you hate paying for the welfare system now? Just imagine what could be. Final thought; if my mother hadn’t had me or if someone had taught her about safe sex, there would have been one less leaning toward the Left woman spreading her insidious liberal opinions. Please don’t shoot me.

It is true that I could choose to not take that responsibility seriously. It is also true that for several years I’ve been struggling with personal demons. Personal demons are my why of summing up having children before I was in a position to give an optimum go at it. Doing okay is not good enough.

So here I am: a mother of two, a wife, an American, a woman. With blinders up, I’ve seemed to manage. It’s a lie. I’m terrified. Self medicating on my drug of choice – distraction – is killing me. I’ve consciously constricted my circle of influence to my daughters and my husband. The time has come to be courageous and pull my head out of the sand.

With countless false starts, I’ve feared embarking on another failure. Too many potential plans have mired me in indecision. This time, instead of waiting for my search for answers to come to a conclusion, I’m just going to take the first steps. Step one is easy. I need to learn to sleep so that my mind isn’t so fogged I can’t take the next step. With a firm commitment, I wish you goodnight.

The point of the digital laundry list is that much of my computer is dedicated to keeping in touch with real live people. The people I live with, the people I’m related to, the people I’ve been friends with and the people I only know via online games or blogs. When I want to contact one of those people, I have several electronic options to do so. I send it on my time, they get to it in their time and eventually communication happens.

I have sung praises to the age we live in, but I have to wonder, is this contributing to my neurosis? Neuroses? I feel like I’m managing my mild agoraphobia and various anxieties. I’ve even considered that upping my communication with friends and family might be helping me improve. But if a good 80% of my socializing is via email, instant message or message board, does it count as socializing? Am I becoming too dependent on electronic filters?

Last night I began to compose a message via facebook to a friend of mine on the east coast. I’m working on a project and I thought she might have some excellent input. I ended up giving up for the night when it became obvious I was spending so much time giving her background information before I could ask what her thoughts were. My plan was to pick up the message in the morning with a fresh brain.

To be fair, my friend is an incredibly active and busy individual. So sending a message that she could respond to when her schedule permits does make sense. Yet, as I began to flesh out the message today, I had the aforementioned thoughts and before I could get anxious, I was dialing her number. As her voice mail picked up and I squished the “leave a message” anxiety down, I mentally laughed at myself.

Chances are good that she won’t have time to call me back. It’s not very important that I get her input specifically. I don’t feel good that I called instead of sending a message. She could be too busy for the message too. All I’ve done is save myself twenty minutes of typing time. If she does call me back, I’m thinking the call would take about ten minutes tops. What if she calls when I’m unavailable? Crap. I’ll stick to emails next time.

Addendum:

I posted this and then had an amazingly good day. Life’s been busy and I haven’t made time to post since this last one. And now that I’m taking a moment to catch up and post, I recognize that this particular post and the silent time since then may make it seem like I must have been supremely unhappy for days. It was a moment I under-posted. There is so much I want to say, and I don’t know if this moment from days ago is worth going into more then this addendum. It was a rough morning and a wonderful evening. I bet you’ve had them too.

 12:41 p.m. Thursday, September 04, 2008

Feels like I’m catching up.

I didn’t sleep well last night. Over two weeks of sleeping at night and getting up early and last night was the first night of real issue. Three nights alone means I must be cautious of eating late and sleeping flat on my back. No one will be waking me from nightmares. Tonight is the most important. The next two I can sleep or not as long as what needs doing get’s done when it needs to be done.

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into mosaic maker.

The Questions:

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name

1. melissa, ix, a punto de dar a luz…, 2. Just a Perfect Day, 3. Triple Exposure?, 4. full color, 5. still from ‘secretary’, 6. X’s prize…, 7. the met reflected, 8. Castles on the Beach, 9. Radiance, 10. tranquility, 11. The Land of Misty, 12. Ambersand