Today's NY Times magazine featured the terrific article I'm so Totally, Digitally Close to You by Clive Thompson about how "newsfeeds, twitter and other forms of incessant online contact have created a brave new world of ambient intimacy". It feels like we've been blogging and facebooking and twittering long enough now that we're starting to see more mainstream dialog around what this behavior looks like and means to us as individuals as well as the culture at large. This excellent article explores many aspects of how this relatively new activity culturally speaking is changing peoples lives in profound and meaningful ways.
A couple of months back, Amy at Diabetes Mine kindly invited me to write a guest post about why we blog, where I spoke of the surprisingly comforting and healing aspects of the process of blogging. Mr. Thompson's article (though he's talking more specifically about micro-blogging and the like) provided a number of insights, that for me, shed some more light on why this might be so: "Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping...to observe what you're feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It's like the Greek dictum to 'know thyself', or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness...Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute...trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others...(one interviewee) argues that her constant status updating has made her 'a happier person, a calmer person' because in the process of, say describing a horrid morning at work forces her to look at it objectively. 'It drags you out of your own head.'"
I couldn't agree more. I'm the last person I'd have predicted to have their life change so dramatically for the better because of the internet and blogging, but it is most definitely the case. Indeed, I really do feel better because of this process, this connection with so many kind and supportive people as well as the wisdom, grace and courage of the community I have found. Is it also because of a new mindfulness or level of self-reflection or having an audience out there that has made this so? I don't know for sure what exactly it is, but what I am sure of is that I do feel better, and in the case of living with the unending aspects of diabetes, that's a very special and worthwhile thing!