Saturday, June 1, 2013

A Life Actually LIVED... Is That Out of Date?

 Does it ever seem like everyone is so busy with virtual things at that real living is losing ground? I know I've been spending an increasing about of time on the internet and computers as I attempt to foray into the world of marketing my books and myself as author... and the one thing that really keeps sticking out at me is the fact that I am simply "not on here enough".
 I'm already shorting all sorts of delicious real life experiences that I'm currently choosing to prioritize beneath my writing exposure... and I miss them badly.
 How can these other people STAND it? What is it, do they Live on their screens?
There is no other way it could work.

 Twitter is like a madhouse. There are thousands of tweets going everywhere at any given second, and it's physically impossible to read all of them. I am a relative newcomer to the tweeting scene, and only have a handful of folks I follow, (compared to many on there!) and I am inundated with 140 character messages.
 I don't even see them all.
 I cannot read them all.
 And, most of them I'm not even interested in.

 I suppose if I lived with a smartphone in my back pocket, I'd whip the little critter out at every quivering ping and check to see what fascinating thing has been released into the world of the cyber-webs by some human thought somewhere on the real earth.
 But what kind of life would that be?

 This morning as the sun was coming up and everything was slightly green and dampish looking, I was walking under the trees of the windbreak, with the grass reaching halfway to my knee. It was beautiful, and peaceful and verdant in a way that no image or video or words could fully express. It was inspiring and calming.

The culprits, w/ my sis to hold them still!
I don't like walking; being a more Bilbo-like character. But I take the dogs out for a circle around the place because they're young and energetic, and if they don't get their excursion they tend to act up at stress points throughout the day.
  -We have rules here for dogs: Don't chase the goats, don't maul the cats, and absolutely-on-pain-
of-a-thrashing do not pounce on a chick, or even a chicken. (These are hard rules for active, adolescent canines, but important ones for the safety and harmony of the farm.)-
  To increase the likelihood of my sticking with this program, I have mapped the distance on MapMyRun (it's .51 mi.) and I add it to my tally. (I'm Walking to Rivendell. Have been for years. Now at the Nimrodel Rope Bridge. ...And need to update my status....)

 How do people following 6,000 Twitterers possibly stay abreast of everything? Is it even remotely likely that they actually do?

 And how do authors write, if they have no real life to infuse their words with authenticity, no real breezes of hard labor and disappointing results to bring poignancy to their fictional disasters, no real world sweetness of victory to steam up through the prose and drag the reader captive in imaginary triumph?

 I don't know how it'd be possible.

  Do you?
            Does anyone out there?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I know! We live in an internet-obsessed society. I'm thankful for the internet in many ways. It's brought me to friends who can be my kindred spirits--yourself especially! :) But the way some people try to describe their lives in FB statuses just amuses me--there's no way the deeper things that happen in life could could be described in just a million silly tweets etc.
That is so true about writers. Writers have to put real life in their stories. The stories won't live without the author's own experiences breathed inside of them--kind of like when Aslan's breath brings the statues to life in the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Too many authors nowadays just " make up" stuff, and sell it, and it's about as appealing as fake fruit--in other words, unappealing. :)
Wow, I didn't know that Walking to Rivendell thing existed! The things you learn from the Internet! lol
A person with too busy an online life has no time for a normal life. But don't leave the internet, please--otherwise I'll lose track of you and your books, and that would be bad bad bad!. :( :D
The dogs are so good-looking. It must be hard keeping them from the chickens, though! lol

Kelsey Bryant said...

100% agreement with you both, Elizabeth and Hannah. There's real life out there, and the only way we can write is to live it. I can see how the situation in Wall-E could potentially come about one day. We've got to keep a balance! I'd hate the internet if it weren't that it enabled me to find friends, learn cool stuff, and, well, write!

Kelsey Bryant said...

Okay, maybe not hate the internet, but definitely rethink how much time I spend on here. :) But the best part of it is definitely the friends. For example, I treasure you two!