"Un-Friending"

Technology, generally, improves peoples' lives. However, sometimes it makes me consider the costs, like functioning on a human level. I don't think I'd ever text a fiance and tell her that the marriage is off and I'm packing my crap to leave our apartment. Sometimes people take advantage of technology to replace interactions that used to occur in person. I'm not criticizing the trend and actually I think in certain instances it's a lot "cleaner" than dealing with things in real life. Texts, emails, and posting on peoples' walls have replaced meaningful interactions. These have become the acceptable social norms.

Let's examine this quasi-relationship that I had with a girl. She was very keen on technology and shocked that I wasn't readily accessible on Facebook. We spent time together, wallowed in each others' neurosis, and even "hooked up" [as the kids call it these days]. Then I must have done something, something that bothered her because we stopped whatever it was that we were. One day I was bored at work and noticed that we were no longer "friends" on various social networking sites. I was mature enough to not pursue it, and relieved that she had discarded me in such a way that it was clear that we were no longer speaking. By "un-friending" me she severed all ties with me, sans public dispute and drama (read, cleaner).

I guess part of me wishes things weren't so easy. I feel cheated on this one. If I am such a bastard, the type that you cannot feign interest in being "friends" with on some meaningless online forum, then certainly that should deserve some sort of explanation. Part of me wants to email her and ask her if I can buy her a cup of coffee so I can hear why she abruptly ceased communications. I'm not really pissed at all, but maybe it shouldn't be so easy to drop off my radar.

City Time

Time is such an abstract concept. I'm not the only person to ever think about a specific dynamic related to time, but I have been thinking a lot about it recently. It's been described more precisely and better by others, and I'm not even willing to enter that competition, but the following is how I have reduced time in my head lately.

Sure, the seconds flutter away into minutes. The minutes sweep across the face of a clock into hours. The hours fade into sunrises and sunsets. Time - it's constantly moving, but I take comfort in the regularity of the progress.

In the city people are always racing against time, moving in a choreographed ballet along the sidewalks. They embrace the concept of perpetual motion and appear to be moving in a controlled rush to get somewhere. However, time slows to a snail's pace with regards to relationships. It isn't uncommon to meet a woman in her mid-thirties, who is unwed (read, single) and appears to be content. Maybe she hides it well, but her suburban counterpart is sprinting to the finish line with a husband and children in her minivan to Wal-Mart. One isn't right and the other wrong, they're just different. Funny how living in a city will make you think about time.