“There’s a crosswalk here…” and other things I finally had to say

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking across the street when I was almost struck by a car. I don’t mean in the funny haha exaggerating kind of way that I normally blog. I was seriously almost hit by a car. It was less than a foot from my femur when I heard the brakes squeal and I looked up at two blank-faced individuals who had been, up until that moment, speeding through campus and now looked right at me like I might be one of those Looney Toon-style mirages that Daffy Duck is always seeing in the middle of deserts. Part of me thought I should let it slide. After all, they didn’t hit me. They weren’t the first drivers to ignore a crosswalk. Who hasn’t made a mistake like that? Another, bigger, louder part of me did not agree. Guess who won.

“There is a crosswalk here!” I shouted, gesturing dramatically at the boldly white painted lines beneath my feet. I stood there in the middle of the road for another 5-8 seconds, giving the most serious death-glare I could manage at the driver who was now staring with fascination at his steering wheel, his glove compartment, and rearview mirror. Slightly ruffled but with as much quiet dignity as I could muster, I walked deliberately the rest of the way across, thinking maybe I had overreacted. Maybe.

But here’s the thing. I’m not sure I did.

One of the things I have been recently realizing is that I let all kinds of things slide. I think that’s actually probably a pretty good thing. Pick your battles, says my mom/your mom/every mom ever. They’re right. There’s no point in getting your back up about every little thing that happens.

But I’ve noticed that lately I’d been letting things slide because I have somehow felt that I didn’t have the right to say that I didn’t like what was going on. I didn’t like feeling bullied or attacked every time I posted a status on Facebook, for example. Side note: I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that Facebook seems to have become the breeding ground for the unsolicited argument. If I posted that the sky was blue, three people would observe that I didn’t mention how fluffy the clouds were, two would berate me for not also commenting on smog levels, and one person would just flat out disagree (“Actually, Elizabeth, the sky is more of a cerulean depending upon the time of day and your relative latitude/longitude. Here’s a link to an article: www.iamrightyouarewrong.website.net”). And all I had set out to do was say that the sky was blue. When did Facebook stop being a place to stalk your ex-boyfriend, untag yourself in hideous college pictures, and start becoming a place where the mere presence of a Facebook status requires some seal of approval or systematic vetting/debunking by any and every person you have ever friended online? It’s not that I can’t debate well. I can hold my own. But that’s not why I’ve kept my Facebook account for this long. I started to notice how angry and tense just logging in was making me. I had, seemingly, four choices: 1) Argue back. 2) Let it slide. 3) Unfriend a lot of people/delete my account. 4) Just say directly what I had been really wanting to say. I noticed that I was letting a lot of people run right over the crosswalk. Facebook was starting to feel like a bizarre warzone which I kept willingly entering, hoping no one would engage me in battle. It’s a horrible feeling.

So I went with 4. I decided to just go ahead and SAY exactly how I wanted to be treated. Do you want to see what I said?

I hate passive aggressive FB statuses as much as the next girl so I'm going to be as straightforward about this as possible. I am only keeping my Facebook account to stay in touch with my favorite people, the people I love, love, LOVE, to see the pictures of their cute babies and celebrate their many joys and life successes. I'm not interested in having one more political/ideological//intellectual debate via Facebook. Have something you need to say to me? Get on a plane and come see me. Call me on the phone. Skype me. You might disagree with me. "That's not fair, Elizabeth. You can't post things if you don't want people to respond to them honestly!" Guess what? I don't care. Don't like it? Unfriend me. Bam.

Do I always get it right? Am I always one hundred percent fair when it comes to my online or real-life interactions? Heck, no. Somehow, though, this little thing – this calling a crosswalk a crosswalk – makes me feel more emotionally safe. I feel like I have taken charge of creating some safe space for myself in a world that is not always so safe.

What about you? Do you have a crosswalk you need to call a crosswalk?

love, elizabeth

Please Let This Mean Something

“Better yet, folks, we can combine[social networking websites] all into one site called “knowny” which records every interaction, every movement of every person on earth and posts them online like a storm of random data points that shouts out to the blind, indifferent universe, “WE EXIST! WE EXIST! PLEASE LET THIS MEAN SOMETHING!”

- Stephen Colbert

 

Source: google.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

 

I’m starting to feel the weight and responsibility of social media pressing down on me like so many tons of html-coded brick.

I wonder about myself and the role of things like Facebook and Twitter and sometimes even this blog in my life. What part of my identity is really revealed in these things? This probably goes hand in hand with yesterday’s post about sharing too much of your heart with the world but…I am beginning to question my attitudes toward social media.

Facebook feels like a chore and yet, I continue to log on, incessantly almost, to see if people have liked my status or tagged me in a picture or commented on the YouTube link I just posted. And then I think, What is wrong with me? Why do I care? What about all of this do I truly find self-affirming? Helpful? Healthy?

Let me be clear. This is not an attack on anyone who is totally plugged in to their Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus and Flickr and Tumblr and Pinterest and YouTube and Blogger and Instagram and so on. I can easily see all of the amazing benefits and unbelievable assets that come with living in this internet-powered decade. It’s kind of mind-boggling how connected to the world I can be with just a click of a mouse (or sometimes less). I see the advantages and I am blown away by the advances in technology that allow us to learn and grow and move with the globe in exciting, revolutionary kinds of ways.

I’m just not sure if it’s really good for me anymore. I actually find myself more and more unhappy with the role of all this stuff in my life. I don’t even want to count the hours I while away, automaton-like, moving between three or four websites like some kind of deranged robot. 

Source: google.com via Elizabeth on Pinterest

 

I find myself torn between the desire to keep up with all the cool and new and hipster and deep well of desire to shut it off, shut it down. I long to drive to the library, not for the list of books I downloaded from the online catalogue but to browse the card index, to revel in the Dewey decimal system, to press my nose to yellowed library book pages and wonder about all the people who checked this book out before me. I dream of meeting each of my Facebook friends, instead for a cup of coffee (my treat) to look them in the eye and say, “How are you? I’ve missed you.” I imagine taking my rolls of film to the Walgreens and leaving them there, sometimes for a week, before receiving a set of prints, often blurry and disappointing and unedited, but fully tangible. I remember when I didn’t text or email, what it was like to call my friends or write them a letter, to hear their voice, to trace the line of their scribbled cursive across the page. I miss that. I miss the part where people had to ask you what your favorite movie was or what you did on Saturday night. Now it’s a click to my profile and you can read a list, a summary, a form meant to condense my entire personality and self – my faith, my politics, the books I’ve read, the quotes (not mine) that are somehow meant to express my depth and worldview and profundity. It’s a strange thing.

I guess I’m looking for balance in my own existence. This is not meant to be an answer for anyone else or even for me. I will keep blogging because I love it. I will keep my Facebook because I want to keep in contact with my family far away. I will Tweet because I enjoy quipping. I love my social media. I kind of hate it, too.

What about you? Do you struggle with this? How have you chosen to find balance in your life?

love, elizabeth