Jumbled

Wow. It's incredible the things you don't remember about yourself sometimes as you get older. I was just looking through the old blog I used to keep at xanga.com/melllisssima. I used to write about the most pointless of pointless things. Mixed in with some point-ful things ~ such as the day my husband first found me there, on September 8, 2006.

Back then I wrote a lot about stress, school, funny things with friends, and weird things that somehow came to my mind while I was bored. I had so much fun with it though.

This current blog definitely has less of that feeling to me. And I don't post to it as often as I did with my old one. I don't seem to CARE as much. Am I less inspired by things? Are new ideas and concepts that much farther in between now?

Sometimes I feel I've become more cynical about things. I'm not sure of the cause. What if it's Facebook? I read a status posted by Chris Maier there that really made me think. He asked:

"is there more or less emotional responses to be experienced now that a large amount of time is spent communicating through technology. Let's say we were talking in person and different things like body language......, atmosphere, surroundings, etc. subconsciously factor into that experience of conversing. In a text or email, the only thing that exists is the text and what we try to read into it. Will there be less options for us to react by due to this simplification of our communication?"

I definitely think this media and other technologies has slowly been taking over something within our souls lately. It's become so all-consuming and "necessary" for communication. But it's cheap communication. As Chris mentioned, while in a group with folks when a question is posed, someone instantly will whip out a smart phone and locate the definite answer right away - leaving no room for a healthy, human discussion on the matter.

What have we done to ourselves?

I believe I'm being affected by it too. Not via smartphone, as I refuse to be THAT connected as the person with their face in a tiny screen all the time. If I'm seeing you in person, I don't want to see your face being illuminated by the deathly glow of a device. If I could ever have a large group party at my future home one day, I would have a basket as people come in that says "drop your device here, or go outside to use it" ha.
 
Perhaps I need to feel more loneliness. In the past I have often taken to writing when I felt alone. I was still writing online where others may see it, but I wasn't surrounded by hundreds of other folks doing the same in a briefly thought-out statement about what they were feeling at any particular time. I take too much of my empty time to be online: checking up on other people and trying to maintain certain (shallow) relationships through the Facebook medium.

How do you keep up with a lot of relationships at once though? Facebook makes that so easy. I've struggled with relationships in general a little lately though. I've written about how friends moving on to other life stages beyond the one I'm in has taken a toll on how closely I can relate to them anymore. It has become very shallow trying to be everyone's friend, too. I've lived in Chattanooga for nearly 4 years now. If you asked me who my "best" friend is (other than my husband) I couldn't tell you. 

When I think of a best friend I think of someone who calls you out of the blue just to talk about nothing, or to ask if we can get together one on one. Who will drive 30 minutes to your place to hang out with you on a regular basis without complaining about the drive. I don't have a best friend anymore, but I used to. Erin McGuire was my best friend through college. I really miss being in her town sometimes.

Maybe I shouldn't worry about relationships so much. Maybe it's okay to only have shallow relationships with people; that I'm just not accustomed to it as I've always had either a best friend or a sister actually present to share things with.

This post feels really jumbled to me. I think it's an indication of how I feel about it all.

A Sight for Four Eyes

I have to blog about my dear husband getting contacts yesterday. Somehow it feels momentous! I mean, when I got them in the eighth grade I thought "This is the best thing everrrr!" When you're older I guess it doesn't tend to weigh as much. But I think it does  :•)

I went in for my exam, without my contacts in, which is very dissociating talking to the doctor without being able to see his face, heh. My vision is like a weird dream that looks like a Monet painting. It's incredibly poor. - 7 in each eye now, which apparently was the worst the optometrist had all day! Most people are between 3 and 4, he said.

Anyway. I get my new contacts in and wait in the waiting room while Jon goes in. I hear him chatting away with the assistant as she measures his eyes, takes retina photos and does the ever-annoying pressure test. He comes out after the full exam and we (Jon, the assistant and I) cram into the little side room where he tries putting contacts in for the first time. *Flashback to eighth grade trying to get a hang of this feat right before graduation, strongly desiring to make it work so I didn't have to wear my ugly glasses while being all dressed up for the occasion.*

But I had forgotten how difficult it was to get these things in! The finesse it takes has become almost innate to me now. Long eyelashes and eyelids that don't want to stay open worked against Jon's first few attempts. The whole time I was thinking "I wonder if it would help if I tried?" Then the assistant suggested I do haha.

For some reason this scenario seemed very comical to me. By this point the assistant and the optometrist are standing there watching me pry my husband's eye open to get the lens in. I'm sure it was the most entertaining thing they'd seen all day.

Surprisingly, popping them into someone else's eye wasn't difficult at all for me. (At first I thought I'd have a problem with it, because when I got them, through the many attempts at sticking things in my eyes, I had started to feel faint about it all). I can't say I've ever touched someone else's eyeball before - but there's a first time for everything!

I think Jon is enjoying them though. In-focus peripheral vision is a totally new thing with contacts. And I imagine that being able to drive with sunglasses + contacts now would be a definite benefit (no weird glares and such with the sun). He may still need reading glasses though, which to me is just as inconvenient as sunglasses, so no big deal. But I'm really enjoying his appliance-free face, and seeing those big brown eyes staring back at me without a reflection in front of them :•)