For years, I’ve held out against the siege of the digital world. And I have to say, it was a good fight. Even though I’m only 21, a tech baby that grew up with the rise of the digital computer in the age of instant information, I was the last of my group of friends to start a Facebook account. I haven’t changed my AIM or my password for ANYTHING since the eighth grade. And the only reason I had a Xanga (REMEMBER THOSE?!) was to look at other people’s Xangas. And after about a month, I found it all terribly boring. In a way, I’m old school in my belief in the tangible. The digital world, with it’s right-click publishing (of whatever you want to publish) and it’s neon lighted screen splashing across my face, just felt so trite and disconnected from the real world, the tangible world of magazines, books and newspapers.
It’d be wrong if I continued without admitting some hypocrisy, though. I do love the internet. I catch all my favorite television on Hulu, I’m a sucker for a good YouTube video, and I’ve spent weekends with my roommate Matt on funnyordie.com. Weekends. But I start to freak out when I imagine that my private library, something that has taken me years to obtain its volume and diversity, can be replaced, or contained, rather, within the plastic confines of the Kindle. Or that old friends want to carry-on “catch up” conversations via text message instead of dropping by an Intelligentsia for forty-five minutes over some hand-pulled espresso. It might sound old school in thought, but lest we forget the novelty of human interaction. Face to face, heart to heart. But we as a generation have created a digital step in the get-to-know-you process that comes just before the exchanging of phone numbers (for texting, not calling, of course), and it sounds like this: “Yea, I’ll find you on Facebook.”
Which brings me to the reason I decided to start this blog after much encouragement from friends and girlfriend (mostly girlfriend). In doing my own perusing of close friend’s blogs and realizing they are no longer Xangas filled with inarticulate, self-absorbed, and often pretentiously overloaded musings of peers, I gave up the good fight, and decided to create on something far less tangible than my beloved books and magazines. I decided on a blog that would showcase my opinions, views, opinions and talents as a writer and actively learning student of life in the city. Whether it be a blurb on style, an excerpt of fiction, or a rant on politics, I’ll try my best to post it on here.
Consider this a standing invitation for any reader to follow, debate, comment on how boring you find me. Interaction is the only thing likely to keep me blogging.
And when you finish reading this, take your hand and touch your computer screen and see how it feels, because that’s as close as you will get to the tangibility of the blog.
K. M. Montgomery
Recommendations:
See: Up In The Air
Do: Become a fan of Arsenal F.C.
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