Facebook: Fast and Frozen food?

I miss blogging.

I did it quite regularly for a time and it helped me process my day and the tensions in my heart and mind, which in turn helped to quiet my soul.

Instead of writing (even a bit) every other day, I have filled my time with the internet - either looking for and rendering voice over jobs or checking facebook and emails. There is a dis-satisfaction with the replacement my blog habit with facebook in particular. I see "facebook" gets a red dotted line under it when I write it --which confirms my suspicion: blogs are already out of date.

I have taken to the frozen food version of connection and truth telling at the expense of home made. It's so much quicker to track down everyone's status on my home page and spy into their friends lives and keep abreast of the daily panic or humor, than to have a genuine conversation or critically engage myself with my world. It reminds me of watching television -- or eating fast food.

I participate in this willingly, and not sure I intend to lessen my habit... but it is with a certain sadness that I acknowledge the lack of blogging. It takes longer, but I am not comparing my thoughts and words to another blogger when I write. I am often crying out from my heart, which then gets somewhat tamed by articulation and comes out as quirky truth telling that helps me see and perhaps stirs the longing for truth in someone else. I am risking being seen - to an extent. And that is usually a generous, if not loving thing to do. By it costs me something. My time and effort.

My status with Facebook is more illusive. I now have such a breadth of friends that I'm not sure how to articulate my truth to such a large demographic. There are many dear friends and family that would be at polar opposite ends of many issues -- which is wonderful in one sense for me -- but in another way, I find it puzzling. How does one address all their world at once? It renders me more apt to be silent, or fretful after I risk stating something. It's strange. It's not real conversation, and yet... it has been amazing to reconnect to people I had thought long lost. In one way it removes the effort with a certain measure of satisfaction, but then... why do I still feel unfed most of the time?

I need some homemade food, not just the fast or frozen kind. Or as Dave says, "Food made with love." Of course it would be even better if I toiled in the ground and grew my own food, for then there would be no need of preservatives. In other words, the metaphor in my mind goes: if I really want to serve myself by telling the truth and putting my thoughts and feelings into word and image, I could just journal privately, for then there would be no pressure for the consideration of how others might perceive...

Instead, I choose to blog, which is already like buying food at the grocery store and then making it my own. I use a system (blogger) to enable a level of truthtelling that is somewhat censored by the fact that others may read it. Nonetheless, I often end up with something that reflects part of who I truly am, and there is a release (a setting free, if you will) in that exercise that helps me.

But facebook... much as I willingly participate, does not provide the same kind of freedom or respect... there is not the vibe of safety or health in the quick and gossipy.

But I do stop in to McDonalds often when it looks like it'll save time and ... who am I kidding?... I love their fries.

So, this is a rather rambling take on the metaphor of nourishing one's soul like we feed our bodies, and the various options we avail for ourselves.

I for one, am grateful for this dose of fresh ground whole wheat toast with store bought butter. But it's not enough to keep me from buying that donut.