I fear this entry will sound like a collection of the worst “when I was your age” cliches lol… So before we dig into “the before times,” as a friend talks about life before Covid, allow me a moment to relay an anecdote.

Pinterest was pretty savage with me tonight. I opened my email. Finally having conquered it once more. Down to only 154 unread, all from mailing lists I enjoy but that have gotten away from me lately. My recent peak was over 5,000 unread emails. Because I was so tired and so depressed I didn’t have the “spoons” to sift through them and delete.

BUT so, I’ve been pouncing on new messages and erasing immediately if I don’t need or want them at all, to help stem the tide. Saw one from Pinterest, as I was preparing to tackle another post for this blog, kind of thinking about the one I made in the wee hours after midnight that I scheduled to post later into the morning. About the dude I knew for 27 years.

Pinterest: “Signs he has no feelings for you.”

Gee, thanks. It’s funny, and it isn’t.

Two downsides to the internet right thur… the mental workload required to keep up with email, especially if you sign up for mailing lists like I often do… and the possibility of seeing something upsetting/triggering.

Here’s perhaps a better “sign” than the ones Pinterest had in mind:

(In my pursuit of a cool “sign” pic, I found a neon sign of a raised middle finger placed dead center over some graffiti that read “F*** my ex.” But that felt mean-spirited and extreme. So we’re just gonna think differently instead).

Moving on.

When I was a kid, there was no internet yet, and no cellphones. As I am SURE you have heard by now, on weekends and during the summer, and maybe even after school, you came home around dinner time (the very beginning of sunset) or when the streetlights lit up. The rest of the day was pretty much yours, to play with the other kids of the neighborhood.

We had a park, and a pool, within walking/biking distance. And everyone had a bike. Eventually, my parents added a basketball hoop to the front of the house, but one of my childhood dude friends had a hoop in his driveway where we’d play.

When I got older, I’d whack a tennis ball against the double garage doors.

Eventually, I withdrew to the great indoors and spent my free time reading on the dining room couch, nursing a mug full of hot tea.

But at some point along that timeframe, we got a home PC, and AOL internet, with all its varied chat rooms. You could make up a username for each one and just nip in and out as you pleased. Talk to strangers.

I had many an ill-fated long-distance romance that way, none of which ever made the transition to real life. Still have printouts of some of the emails from those people saved in one of my earlier journals.

For the curious:

I describe some of these virtual relationships, and many others, most more concrete in nature, in Love and the Phantom Queen of Suburbia. It’s my non-fiction collection of open letters addressed to people and works of art that I found formative, over the course of my life.

Love and the Phantom Queen of Suburbia: Buy Here!

Gilmore Girls had an episode with a very witty line of dialogue about how slower internet allowed you time to make a sandwich while you waited to get online, and do a little dance. I’ll never forget the crackle and squeaks and white noise of the AOL running man making his way to the internet.

There was no such thing as streaming, because the connection speeds were way too slow, and downloading took more than a hot minute. But you could find damn near anything, if you knew where to look. One of my friends from my first year of college in Los Angeles managed to dig up Peter Steele’s Playgirl photoshoot on one of the campus library computers. As I said. Damn near anything.

Overall, I’m happy we have the internet as a tool for connection, but I’m not sure I’m the best person to ask. Given the anxiety that sometimes plagues me, online socializing feels a lot safer. So maybe I neglect real-world encounters more than I should. And indoors over outdoors. I don’t know.

I’ve definitely had mixed experiences with online dating. Maybe some things are meant to happen in person. But then, I have made some amazing friends online, too, and kept in touch with people from high school, and former jobs.

There’s another daily prompt running about when do you know it’s time to unplug. Probably every damn day. I could use some more walks in nature, for sure, and more time spent meditating, though that typically involves some online guided recordings, as well.

We used to have some beautiful walking paths in a small woods near my parents’ house, until the city added more water retention basins. BUT… doesn’t this look like a lovely place to have a stroll?

I’ll see what I can do about touching more grass, as they say.

Tomorrow I do have plans out in the wild, to meet a friend for dinner after work. So, there’s that. And she has to meet up a little later than originally planned. I’ll be coming straight from work with very little travel distance. Time enough to seek a brief adventure somewhere else before heading to the restaurant.

Wish me luck!

EDIT TO ADD: I had forgotten all about pre-internet things like card catalogs, and the all-important phone book. Research papers meant physically going to the library, and either talking to the librarian, and/or consulting cabinets full of small, square drawers with surprising depth, full of cards describing all the books to be found within the library, perhaps in combination with entries from encyclopedias and dictionaries.

Yes, phone books still exist today, but they were much more powerful before the internet. You could look up almost anyone’s landline number and just call them! I got a phone call from a guy in my English class while he was making his special secret recipe roasted potatoes. Because of the phone book.

Phone books have really slimmed down, since most people just use a cell. And I don’t think they’re delivered free to everyone, the way they used to be, by the phone company. I could be mistaken about that, but I can’t remember the last time I got a phone book in the mail. Now, there are websites for reverse phone lookup and people searches and more. The physical book is all but obsolete for anything more than advertisements.

Eventually, libraries computerized their catalogs, as well. I love that I can browse for books from home off the library website and reserve copies of books I want to read without having to travel there first.

At the same time, there’s still something to be said for wandering the aisles of bookshelves, and the displays of what’s new or what the librarians are loving lately, and finding new things to peruse that way.

Here’s a pretty, found-photo of a book display. Not sure if the titles are in English, since they’re partly obscured. But it’s a great pic. Library vibes, for the win! And bookstores, too, though libraries have the grand virtue of being free, provided you return your books on time.