Facebook Status Updates...

... Have taken over my brain!

So... here lately I find myself in the middle of something and I think, "Lisa is wondering how the house could get this messy in less than 24 hours," or, "Lisa is baking peanut butter cookies... again," or, "Lisa is washing Ellie, because Caleb is flipping out that Ellie is covered in strawberry juice (hey that's a good one... might use it if I ever start the laundry)!"

And my question is, "Has it really come to this?"

Here's what I mean...

I have 168 friends on facebook and 115 on myspace. Some of them are the same. I know almost all of them personally. I generally do not accept friend requests from people I don't know, but I have made a couple of exceptions for teenage friends of friends, because ya know... we work with teenagers. It would be kind of stupid for me to reject their friend requests. At any rate, I think I have 2 or 3 friends that fit into that category. In addition, I generally refrain from inviting people I do not know to be my friends, but I do have just a couple of bands listed. One of them is Caedmon's, and I have at least met them... twice, and the other is a local band that invited me to be their friend after they talked to Phil or something. My point in all of this is not to give you a detailed profile of my friends. My point is to make it clear that I am connected with a couple of hundred people, via social networking sites, whom I actually know.

Of those couple hundred people, I see maybe 25 of them on a fairly regular basis, because they live in the same town as me. Family comprises another handful. But the vast majority of the people I am connected with on-line I have not seen in years.

For the most part, I log in to my account and I check the status updates, so I know exactly who is doing homework... and who is texting right now ( a phenomenon that I still can't quite grasp)... and who is planning an Easter Egg hunt this weekend. I cruise photo albums to see how big the kids are getting... or what the new house looks like... or how drunk everybody got last Friday night. I send a message here and there, and very occasionally I get wrapped up in a chat. And life goes on...

And it really irritates me, because I have always been the kind of person who cares deeply... and forever. And when I log off, I wonder how they're really doing. And I wonder if there's anything at all I could be doing to make a difference...

And then I think, "Lisa is perplexed. She wonders why she feels like she has to save the world when she can't even do the dishes..."

Lisa