Is it only me?

I recently joined Face book to stay in touch with the 4teen who was away for four months, and the minute I joined, I had fifteen friends lined up for me, mind you, none of them even close to my age!

No I am not that outdated, I am part of linkdIn as well, because I find it a nice informational and networking tool. I keep in touch with colleagues past and present and I have reconnected with a lot of classmates. I belong to various groups and I use their experience in my own career life.

Then I am part of a family tree website that keeps the family in touch and another one that I do not even recall the name and not too long ago I hear that twittering is a new thing. As I was debating whether I should join that or not, I sat back and reflected.

I have not read a decent newspaper or a book in a while. The last time I sat with my friend to have coffee and catch up was....? I do not know when. This online networking takes a lot of my daily time! Every morning I have to check my work, home, and personal email and answer them as well. Then I have to sign on in face book and my other networking groups to see what is going on, despite all the buzzes on my cell as someone writes something for me. By the time I am done with that, half my morning is gone and believe it or not, I have a full time job! Midday, as I recheck my emails, I have to respond to some networking mails and then I have to sign in and........ Now that I think about it, all my friends are virtual! Of course, now I know much more about them than what they want to share, because with these networking sites, I have learned to read the body language of the photos and read in between the fine lines.

As I learn more than necessary about my friends, I have noticed that they may find out more about me too, because my life is in the open out there. All my friends can see my other friends, and as I figure what people are doing, I know that there are more intelligent people like me out there that are figuring out what am I doing. I know that I do not want to share too much with them. So I have become very selective in what I write, because of the no privacy issue.

First we lost meeting with friends regularly as cell phones came along, then we stopped hearing their voices as emailing and texting became a fad and now we are in virtual places talking to our friends without that human touch. Call me old fashioned or romantic, but sometimes I like not knowing what my friend is eating for lunch or feeling today. I do not need to see all odd pictures of my friends that make no sense to me. And worse of all, I hate how I have been estranged from my normal life just trying to keep up with all these sites. It is so exhausting and adds no value to my life whatsoever.

In short, twittering is not on my agenda at this point. I am sure that everyone has a good life of his own, but now I want to resume getting my own life and I will not be sharing it with anyone either.