My lack of presence here can be explained in the title.  Facebook. 

In the beginning, you join, and that’s lovely, but you just don’t know what you’re in for.  All of the sudden, people start coming out of the woodwork, and you’re connecting with people you haven’t seen since elementary school, or from your college years, or from your twenties, all those people who were so important to you at that time but somehow faded into the woodwork.  When you become someone’s friend, you can see all of their friends (and vice versa), and then suddenly there are ALL of these people from the days of yore, and your friend list explodes like a field of dandelions.  Then friends of friends are wanting to be in your world (why?), and for me, I suddenly had 300 ‘friends.’  I honestly do not even KNOW 300 people.  However, Facebook IS  an interesting application, and since it involves me sitting here staring at my computer, I look like I’m working.  On something important.  In the beginning, it is EXTREMELY addictive.  And I would know.

On Facebook, there are all sorts of applications-ones where you can send good karma to your friends, help save the rainforest by sending virtual plants to one another, another where you can help our oceans by…yup, sending virtual fish.  Yet, there are also games on it that are a bit more…involved…shall we say.

And you know what I’ve got addicted to?  Virtual FARMING!  No joke.  They start you off with 5 plots of land planted with tomatoes, $1000, and a cow, I think.  Your goal is to grow crops, make money so you can clear land and grow more crops (clearing & plowing are 20 bucks a shot).  That’s all.  It almost takes on this Zenlike quality because there’s no competition, no worrying, no nothing.

In the beginning, I plowed and grew sooooo many tomatoes (because you can harvest them in one day and they have a high ROI) that it took a big chunk of my day. After you harvest, you have to re-plow and re-plant (no, there is no crop rotation or things of that nature on it-yet).  If you had friends who were also farming, you could send them trees and animals.  Receiving gifts of trees was great  because they ripened every 3 days, and you made money harvesting them.

Now, I am wrought with so many trees that I don’t know what to do!  I only farm a crop on the perimeter of the plot now, more for aesthetics than anything.  I have so many different trees and animals that I’ve piled everything off to the side in hopest that the blank space will inspire me to design something that looks really absolutely ultra fantastic.

In the beginning, one could send 30 trees/animals to friends.  Then it went up to 40.  Then there was about a week where there was a glitch in the system, and you could send as many as you wanted.  You see, if you RECEIVE a gift from someone, it’s free.  All of the items are also for sale, but they are incredibly expensive. 

When I’m hanging out on my ‘ether-farm’ these days, I am amazed.  I have SO many animals and trees, and they were ALL presents.  People talk about Facebook negatively, saying it is shallow and you don’t REALLY rekindle your friendships, you just have them in your friend list and send them silly things.  That’s probably the truth for most.  But that’s probably good enough for most too.  However, one thing I CAN say is that through this little game I’ve been playing, and in the sending plants and fish and karma, I have re-connected with some people  I never thought I would see again in a million years.  True, there’s not much personal communication with most of them-you see that they’ve sent you something, you send something back if you’re so inclined, you write an occasional comment on their wall, but that’s about it.

This would serve as proof that Facebook is a shallow thing.  But one day, a girl with whom I went to boarding school came across my farm.  We fast became ‘farm buddies, and soon, we were writing more in depth messages, not merely leaving comments on one another’s boards, but really emailing one another and discussing the paths our lives have taken (which were VERY similar, even though we had little in common in boarding school), where we are now, where we hope to be.  I would say that ‘back in the day,’ we were barely more than acquaintances, and now, I feel I can consider her a real friend.  In the ethers.  

If it WEREN’T for Facebook, we probably never would have crossed paths or seen/heard/or particularly cared if we did.  In spite of all of the superficiality found on that site, it IS possible to reconnect with people there, if you choose to, and maybe that’s what was meant to be.  If it was any time earlier, we would have been in very different worlds living very different lives, but NOW was the right time for us to meet again.  I guess some things are just supposed to happen that way.  Thanks, Facebook.