I lead a strange and interesting life, that’s to be certain. I’ve found the most frustrating thing about it recently is living my life on different levels.

1. I have a personal life, which at one point, I felt as though I was the only one who could see it. I then realized that it was valuable to be able to trust people with that aspect of my life from time to time. 

2. I have a life which others perceive. While I have little control how others see me, I still attempt to manage the way others see me as much as I possibly can. There are circumstances where this is not the case; typically dependent on how well I know the people around me. I’ll throw some inhibitions out the window if I’m completely comfortable.

Now, it’s the first two that I don’t mind. It’s the first two that I have dealt with for most of my life. That’s not to say I haven’t struggled, but I think many of the difficult parts I found have found a recurrence in this third part of my life. I can’t say I hate it, if I did I’d abandon it, I’ve just found it complicated recently. And that is: 

3. I have an online life. Yes, including this. When I speak of this, though, I’m mainly talking about the ‘online status’ part of my life. I’m hyper-sensitive to how I portray myself online. I don’t lie online, but I do choose to omit some private parts of my life. For many they’ll edit out their typical social interactions. I haven’t ever done that, not really. What I’m talking about is the general status messages about how I’m doing. At one point, I had horrible food poisoning, and made it sound quite mild saying on twitter that my stomach was upset. I think this a good indication, at least in that physical way, what I mean. 

Inherently, I don’t have a problem with omitting things. I don’t think it’s necessary for all of my ‘friends’ on Facebook, or those who follow me on Twitter to know how I’m doing all of the time, they don’t need to know if I’m having one hell of a crappy week, but I think it’s important for friends to know. Those whom I love, they want to know. I want to know when my friends are lousy, if only to support them. But what happens when the main way I stay in touch with friends to keep up on how their doing is syphoned through these methods? Some friendships warrant it, others don’t, that I understand. But those that do? What happens? They don’t get the dirt. They see my life through a filter. A filter put in place by some, but not for all. 

For me, this has become one of the most important reasons to push interpersonal interaction outside of the new technology that we see. Maybe it’s completely selfish because I’m not willing to announce to the world when I’m not doing well, but I would like those who are closest to me… I’d like them to know, at least from time to time that things just plain suck.

Tomorrow is election day, it’s voting day. The majority of the attention of the past two years has finally come to a culmination – I’m so relieved. Yes, I care deeply about who our next president might be. But more than that I care that people vote. I know that that might sound a bit cliché. I actually don’t care if you don’t vote for or against anyone or anything on the ballot. Just that you go, and sign the register. I mean, if you don’t know anything, then don’t vote on it, but at least GO. What it comes down to is that especially for certain demographics, as in the 18-30 year-old demographic, it’s imperative. We don’t have a voice unless we vote. Right now, our grandparents have a voice, but we don’t. That’s not to say that dear-old grandma and grandpa don’t deserve to be taken care of, of course they do. But as we see, and as we have seen, we are truly the future. If we want to have the resources to take care of our parents and their parents, then we need to make sure that we have say in the way government is run.

It’s not the president, unfortunately, and really it’s not even so much who we elect, but more so that we played a large part in electing them. You see, we’re the ones that they’re then trying to please. I hate politicians, all of them, but apparently, they’re not changing any time soon, so it’s important that we play into their game as much as possible. That means that we become their constituency by voting them into office. If we have a large turnout, then they listen. It doesn’t matter if we voted for or against them or not. They have no idea who voted for them, well, aside from exit polls, they just have an idea of who voted. 

I know it’s complicated and unlikely that it could happen that way, but that’s the best solution. Vote, but abstain from the things you don’t inform yourself about. And really, with the resources that we have these days, there’s no excuse for being uninformed. I just spent the last two hours – MAX – looking at the variety of ballot initiatives and amendments and candidates from my State Senator to my Regional Transportation Director – and now have a good idea of how I want to vote.

I truly don’t care how anyone votes, just that they do, and that when they cast a vote, that it’s for (or against) someone or something that they know about. 

Rant done, at least for the next two years(ish).