It's a Love/Hate Relationship.

It seems to me that people my age are hanging in the middle. I still remember what it was like when cellphones were bulky, my computer was as twice the size of my head, and floppy disks were technologically progressive (and came in badass neon colors). But now advancements in technology are expanding exponentially.  Younger and younger people have a better and better grasp on harnessing the so-called “mechanisms” of the future. Like my 9-year-old cousin and his friends. He was showing me his yearbook a while ago, and giving me the breakdown of who was who:

“This guy’s nice, but we don’t talk that much…That girl has a crush on me…Oh yeah, that kid’s my friend, he reprogrammed my computer chip…”

“Oh yeah? One of his parents works with computers, they did that?”

“No. He did it.”

What the hell?

We may be of the same generation, but his age-bracket has a completely different perspective on the way the world works. For them, computers and all their various capabilities are just a way of life, but I still feel like I’m getting used to it.

I don’t quite know where I stand. Sure, I know computers better than my grandparents and waste an obscene amount of time on them. I own a smartphone, and I can comprehend the potential at my fingertips every time I open my laptop. But I’m also slow-moving. I mentioned before that I lagged behind in the race through social media. I don’t believe in e-readers because I love books and papers and dog-ears and cover art and fading pages. I’m blogging, but I think that social media can be just as detrimental to the social fabric as it is instrumental in globalization. Sometimes I look back nostalgically at the days when people spent less time with their faces in their phone, blocking out the world with music blasting in their earbuds (I can hear that you’re listening to Justin Bieber), and more time making eye contact with strangers and striking up a spontaneous conversation or listening to how loud those birds actually are. Even as I myself half-run across campus listening to my old i-pod nano, checking my mail on my phone, and mentally cussing out every bicyclist that almost runs me over (This happens in Berkeley WAY more often than it should.) I’m basically contradiction personified.

And I guess I’m wondering if anyone else feels that way too. Which reminds me, I didn’t mention it before but I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments. 

I seriously can't think of a title for this.

I wasn't among the first to join Facebook, it took me until the end of last year to join Twitter, and now I'm here, catching up to the times and keeping a blog. Out of all forms of social media, blogging is probably the best suited to me. I love writing, but I never do it because writing assignments make me anxious, and it doesn’t occur to me to write for the hell of it. But I do talk. A lot. And every once in a while I say or hear something that I think is worth preserving forever. So now I write. 

Even as I’m writing this, I keep thinking of it like an assignment, referring back to an audience I think I have to please. And then that keeps me from wanting to even write anything at all, because I don’t know what any of you want. Like right now, part of me thinks that this is going to be boring as shit and you’re going to read the first few lines, call it a noble effort, and then go read some memes that are actually funny. The weird thing is that I haven’t even defined who “you” are. I have no idea who is going to read this (besides, of course, my parents).  So why even bother with a blog? Why not just write down those thoughts I want to preserve in a personal journal, and do away with an audience and therefore eliminate any standards that make me anxious?

I guess this is my way of putting myself out there. Of releasing whatever it is my mind concocts for anyone to agree with, disagree with, ignore, ridicule, or publish into a book that garners a cult following which desires something more than sparkly, parasitic love. You know, hypothetically speaking. Essentially, I’m stretching out feelers for a community. I don’t claim to speak for my generation, but we share the same time period, the same global events, the same cosmic frontier, the same polluted air, the same doomsday deadline in December this year, the same knowledge that the world keeps spinning, whether we know our place in it or not. I could very well be singularly insane, but even then I think there is something to gain from those—especially from those-- we think we can’t relate to.