Living the life.

Living the life.

Recently, I have been suffering from a technological breakdown.

I remember when I got my first email account. It was 2001 and at the time, I was not even fully clear on the concept what e-mail (which I do believe may have still have still been hyphenated) meant. I was not deprived teen and owned my own personal disc player and two-lbs. cell phone that was so wide, I couldn't even fit it in my back pocket.

In fact, the introduction of electronic mail came into my life via a request that my AP Literature teacher made for there to be an class email list. That way, we could all stay connected, during the six hours that we weren't actually all floating on the same campus.

Eventually, my involvement in the internet grew and over the next seven years, I would find myself with not only multiple email addresses (one for school, one for personal/friends, one for general/family and one that is old and I just don't want delete), but also, I was a member of four or five different social networking services, including: Facebook, Friendster, Myspace, Downelink, Aim and a few others, most of which I had elaborate and thoughtful personalized profiles, written and designed by myself.

By 2005, I had gotten to the point of acquiring a cell phone with email capabilities, because I needed to be connected when I was on the bus, sitting outside, in the classroom, etc.

By 2007, I had had enough. I felt overall too connected. I did not like being so highly accessible and I did not like that idea that people continually had access to me. I NEEDED SPACE. So, recently, I kicked many of my connections to social networks to the curb. Although, it took me a month to build up the nerve, I closed most of my accounts, only leaving my two main email addresses up and still running.

I wanted to get back to communicating to people face-to-face. I missed sitting down and talking to my friends and having them not know everything, because they have been tracking my updates on Facebook and Friendster.

When I learned that I would be entering the world of Second Life, I was a little hesitant. My virtual break-up is still new and fresh and ethnographic research or not, I was not sure if I want to plug back in. Just by hearing descriptions from my classmates, who all made to move to both sign up and explore, before I even could figure that I had to download Second Life onto my computer, I got the impression that it was a networking tool that would require constant attention and time spent living, exploring and forging new relationships with other SL Avatars…a challenge I am not sure I am up to.