In March of 2001, I was a graduate student working toward a masters degree in criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston while simultaneously completing the thesis portion of a masters degree in psychology from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. I was needless to say busy, poor, and busy....wait I already said that. Although e-mail had been around for years by this time, it wasn't a common thing in my world yet. I had e-mail but really only used it at that time to send revisions of my thesis to my advisor back in Missouri. For conversation, I still used the phone, the landline phone. Whoa! How old am I?
My Daddy had a special family monument dedication that he had worked on for a long time to schedule, and because he wanted me to be in town, he scheduled it for my spring break. Thank God he scheduled it so I could be in town with him!! It would turn out to be our last days together because he died later that night of the dedication.
The day before the dedication was a lazy one. Certainly not my norm. I was used to waking up about 10-11 AM, studying until classes began at 2 PM, attending classes from 2-10 PM, studying until about 4 AM, then off to bed to start all over again the next day. But lazing about with a movie was not a normal thing for me. As "not normal" as e-mailing for EVERYTHING, like I do now.
Dad was lazing with me and You've Got Mail was on HBO. The kind of fluff that is You've Got Mail was a perfect thing to veg with that day. I remember thinking that as excited as Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks were to get e-mails from one another that it couldn't possibly be better than getting a letter. Full disclosure, I still believe that! I especially believe it now that e-mails are overwhelming and the written word in new form is less and less all the time.
I certainly didn't know that there would come a day when the majority of business, social contact, communication, and information would come to use electronically. I'm pretty sure we even remarked that it was good for jokes and stuff but not much more, people like to deal with people, and something along the lines of it's just a movie, or something like that. Little did we know what it would become to communication of all kinds 13 years ago.
In the early days it was exciting to "get mail", now I often shudder when I think about how many e-mails I have to deal with in a day. It's become a monster.............an unstoppable, way-too-powerful, look-I've-replaced-meaningful-face-to-face-communication, time sucker of a monster.
Side note: I also remember thinking that the big bad bookstore was awful for killing the cool little homey, neighborhood bookstore with oodles of personality. Now, even giant bookstores are having trouble staying in the black because of technology. Time definitely marches on and I MOSTLY march with it. But I refuse to surrender my books, my paper, my pencils and pens, my envelopes, and my stamps. I just love the smell of books, and the written word (the 'I actually wrote it with my hands' word) too much!
Now, how can I blog by paper and pen.......................
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