Who am I blogging for? - random thoughts on modern relationships

So many of my friends have started blogs lately that I feel that I will be left behind if I don't jump on this bandwagon too. Truthfully I am not sure how long this will last or how diligent I will be about keeping it up to date, especially with my new little bean coming soon but I guess it's worth a try... so here I am.

I have been toying with this idea for a few weeks. I love going onto my friends' blogs to read about their thoughts and experiences. The blog as a type of medium definitely conveys different aspects of their lives and personalities than discussion boards, personal webpages and Facebook. Of course these are not my IRL friends, I only know them virtually.

I have to say that I have now known this group of women, the Peas, for a little over a year. They were there when I was TTCing last July and August, they were there through my miscarriage in October and they were there when I got pregnant again in January. Every single day I go onto our special private board and can catch up with them. It's incredible I feel although I have only met 2 in person out of the 25 or so of the group. These are people who know more about what is going on in my life and in my head than any of my IRL friends and even my DH.

I believe that this type of relationship is only possible through the web's technology. The anonymity of it allows one to open up in ways one would normally not dare to IRL, and in turn these confidences build bonds that grow ever stronger over time. There is more intimacy in some of these virtual friendship than in most IRL ones. I would do anything for these women and I know that they would too for me, yet it is very probable I will never meet most in person.

And I know I am not the only one in this situation since discussion boards, especially mom groups, have taken off in the last couple of years. So if this type of relationship is made possible only through internet technology and hence did not exist a few years ago, this leads me to wonder whether this a brand new addition to the spectrum of human relationships or whether it is taking the place of something else that we already had? Are we slowly shifting the investments necessary to maintain any relationship from flesh and blood people we know to more virtual (at least to us) ones? How is all this technology influencing and affecting the relationship in our lives?

I have to admit that often I speak to my DH through MSN although he is in the same room as me. I use Facebook to keep up with some of my oldest and best friends. I use e-mail more than I pick up the phone in order to catch up with family. More and more my social interactions are at least partly mediated by the computer. Why?

Perhaps it is because there is instant or near instant gratification in these interactions. Perhaps it is because there is a feeling of control to it. I can choose how much or how little interaction I will have by choosing a medium through which to interact which suits my needs at the time. I can choose the timespan of response once again through the choice of medium. I can choose to catch up on people without divulging anything from me on Facebook for example. I can choose to interact in real time with certain people and not others through MSN messenger's various functions. I can choose to wait a few days to reply to a friend's email. None of this is possible through face-to-face interactions or through the phone. Certainly these phenomena are happening on a greater scale and are impacting society. Will it be for better or for worse? Will my children deplore the relationships of yore or will they evolve in a world that will soon be foreign to me?

Internet communication is certainly more efficient than posting a letter to a far away penpal and waiting weeks for a reply that often never comes. But at the same time it is so much less romantic. We lose the magic of those days wondering whether the intended recipient has indeed received our letter, imagining them reading our words, and anticipating their response. Will my sons ever have penpals in faraway locales like I had as a child? Will they even know what a penpal is? Will they ever send a handwritten note through "snail mail"?

Somehow when I think of them growing up and spending hours in anonymous chat rooms as so many kids do today I get scared to death. I would much prefer that they have IRL friends, those feel so much safer.

I guess I am slowly digressing from the original purpose of this post: who am I blogging for? and who should view my blog? I believe that it is principally for me, in order to satisfy my curiosity and explore this new universe. It is a way of keeping and sharing my daily thoughts with mostly anonymous individuals. I don't think I would want DH or my IRL friends to see it. I think some relationships require some distance but find it insanely strange that I would want to keep some thoughts and reflections from the people I should be closest to while having no problem to share it with strangers. I guess this is the modern paradox of blogs.

Although I love and feel comfortable viewing my virtual friends' blogs daily, I always feel like I am a voyeur when I check the blogs of the people I know IRL. Why? I'm not quite sure. Perhaps we all need our private personal space yet crave feedback from others on it. Perhaps blogs are the way to achieve this, to keep our inner most thoughts from our social and familial circles while at the same time getting feedback from faceless readers. Again I think this probably comes back to the sense of control. I can delete any comment I don't like on here and easily forget about them. The ease of amnesia will be inversely proportional to the strength of the relationship just as it is IRL, it is simply that the range of variation is much greater virtually.

So to answer my own initial question and conclude this entry I must say that I will not send DH a link to this blog. It will not be posted on Facebook nor shared with my IRL friends. I will share it with my close virtual friends though, and I will see how leaving it open to the nameless faceless masses of the internet will affect me. Somehow though I doubt that anyone but the Peas will find it and read it, but somehow that element of "having it out there" is appealing.

I had planned to use this space to be funny and witty as so many mom blogs are but I guess my nerdiness once again overcame me. Sometimes I can't stop myself thinking about the big picture instead of focussing on the small details that make everyday life so enjoyable. Perhaps that's because I am an epidemiologist after all and we tend to focus on populations and the "Big Picture" of health. I did have fun putting these thoughts down though :-)

Perhaps next time I will try to be less nerdy... and perhaps I will try to use the word "perhaps" less frequently ;-)