missing cyber calm

Once you move past middle age (don’t ask me to define it – you’ll know when you’re there), if you’re like so many of us, you suddenly have an opportunity to sit back and chill out.

If you’ve been reading your own internal meter well, you understand that you are neither as smart as you once thought you were, not as stupid as you once feared you could become. You know which words provoke and which words help to calm things down. You know what not to say even though sometimes you’re tempted to blurt it all out.

You are at a point where life (baring tragedy) can be very smooth and you have the power to make it even smoother.

So you wake up in the morning, and if the Times is right, you (like me) turn on your laptop and you check things out: email, facebook, blogs – your favorites, to jumpstart your day.

And aren’t you just shocked at how agitated and blood-thirsty the world of cyberspace postings has become? It’s harder and harder to find the careful writers who worry about getting their story and their words out in the best possible way. Mostly, the concerns seem to be with getting every last angry syllable out before someone beats you to it.


Ah well. It could be that I am regretting too much the hour spent this morning on Net readings. By the time I pushed my sweet Mac Book aside, I was drowning from an overload of others’ bad vibes.

And after? The day simply disappeared. My watch tells me I am just about into the next day now. Sure, that makes sense. I finished my moonlighting stint just a few hours ago. Daughters and Ed pulled me out for a late meal at the Old Fashioned, where even after 10, it was loud enough that you could bring a howling dog and no one would notice.

We ate sandwiches and salads and I could feel the tension dribble out of me so that when we left, I was again drifting in mellow straights.

I leave you with a photo of an amused, but less chilled Ed. I would guess that for him, segueing from a quiet shed with two cats to a loud dining hall with three happily animated women is as tough a transition as the one I face each morning now as I turn on my computer.






But I'll say this: loud good cheer at the Old Fashioned is far calmer than quiet ill-temper of a cyber fight over one issue or another. Truly, I wish the Net was a sweeter place. In the alternative, I'll settle for a Door cherry salad with blue cheese and salmon anytime.