I've been thinking about the internet lately. And, you know, life and stuff.

I'm going to try to cut back on this internet stuff. Yeah, just as I'm starting a job where I'm in charge of five or six websites. I know.

I don't know what I want from this website anymore. I think I'm going to leave it as is until I figure that out. What is a personal website for, other than blogging? What was it for? Is blogging going to last? Where do we go from here?

Christopher and I don't own a TV, and I love that. We don't listen to the radio either, and I love that. I love a life free from commercials and over-produced Top 40 crap, free from yet another crime drama bringing rape and murder into my living room five or six times a night. I am not entertained by that. I am increasingly horrified by the stories we tell. I find my music and my TV from recommendations from friends. I am not limited to the Thursday night schedule.

But we've replaced it with the internet. I've replaced commercials and crappy sitcoms with MSN, Facebook, Gmail, Ask MetaFilter, Apartment Therapy, Political Theory Daily Review, web comics, RSS feeds, Dooce, Flickr, del.icio.us, more links, more more more. And is my life richer for it? Sure, I have a lot more trivia to offer and I can talk to my friends without paying for long-distance. There are some great sites out there. But there is so much filler. So many Ask MetaFilter discussions that I don't really need to read. So many articles, so much wandering from link to link to link. My attention span is dying because I'm constantly scanning, constantly multi-tasking, constantly looking for the next good article because there's always more more more. Never stopping to let it sink in. Monitoring my Flickr, my email, my Facebook.

I get frustrated with books now because they take so much time, because they aren't built for skimming. I catch myself looking for the search function! I fidget, I get restless, I put the book down and check my email.

I need some quiet. Some going outside. Some more time teaching Christopher to play rummy and helping him learn not to be such a poor loser. (It's not my fault that I kick his ass. If he really wanted to win, he would have spent all of high school playing it obsessively like I did.)

We always talk about how much we love Toronto, but we rarely take advantage of it. What do we do here that's any different than what we did where we came from? We go to work, we come home, we have dinner with friends, we sit and read the internet all evening. Sitting on the couch, each with our laptops. Sometimes we download TV. Ridiculous.

We live down the road from the Mediathèque and we have memberships, and we never go. We walk through Grange Park on our way somewhere else. I want picnics and dog-watching. I want to buy harnesses for the cats and let them stalk the pigeons they're always monitoring. I want poetry slams and free improv at Second City. I want to take a cooking class, to read a book from start to finish, to learn Javascript and do something interesting with it. I want my hands to heal enough that I can crochet again. I want to go to more of the film festivals—Reel World, Cinéfranco, there's so many great ones. I'd like to actually go to Trampoline Hall more often; we keep missing it! I want to take my bike to the Toronto Islands this summer.

I want to unplug, to take more walks, to slow down. I want to write in my journal instead of blogging. I want to reflect, not link. I want to write more letters and fewer emails. I want to grow herbs and vegetables on our balcony. I want to investigate vermicomposting. I want to learn to draw. I want to photograph more. I want French classes.

I'm not doing any of that right now, I'm blogging. Et tu?

I've got a new job! I sort of stumbled onto something really quite perfect for me:

• It's a 15 minute walk from our condo.
  
• I'm doing web stuff.
  
• It's a fairly small non-profit.
  
• It provides information for people who are HIV positive or AIDS patients.
  
• It is diverse and open-minded.

So many bonuses! It's close! It's work I can feel really good about contributing to! I've been reading for years about sexuality and gender issues and how our governments have really messed up with these issues, and now I get to work for an organization that is fixing that! I get to play with web stuff!

It's going to be so hard not to blog about work.

Wait, does this mean I'm one step closer to the ULTIMATE NICE GIRL FACEBOOK PROFILE???

Me:

My face reflects my mother's:


Mirrors make me self-critical:


I'll let the cats interrupt my work:


Christopher:

"Poses" for photos:


Befriends killer dogs:


Laughs in the face of danger (in this case, the danger of dropping your expensive camera into the rapids below):

Today I feel like being snarky. :)

A Good Profile (Nice Girl Version):

1. Your profile picture will feature:

• your wedding,
  
• you and your fiancé or boyfriend,
  
• you and your child, or
  
• a close-up of your head, preferably at an odd angle.

2. Your work info:

• You are in school, loving it.
  
• You are working, successful and loving it.
  
• You are staying home with your child, because it is your choice and you are 100% thrilled about it, not ever because it's harder to find work as a woman with children or because you were paid so little that the cost of alternative child-care is equal to or greater than your former pay. (I'm not saying it always sucks to stay home with your kid. I think parental leave is great. I'm saying there's a bit more to women being the ones who quit their jobs for it than choice.)
  
• You are unemployed freelancing.

3. Messages/Wall Posts:
How are you? You are great, because:

• You just got married, check out the pics.
  
• You had X number of children, check out the pics.
  
• Your boyfriend is sooooo awesome.
  
• You absolutely love your job, every single second of it.

Oh, Facebook. The home of online social interaction, where everything is gender-normative, sanitized, and awesome. I'm successful and happy too, see?? I just have to work on that husband and kids thing. Oh, and a job that makes me tingle with delight.

Highlights of my week:

1. Hanging out with Ada (Queen of the Jolly Jumper) and Linda:



2. Making Ada ride the cat:



3. Getting the stomach flu at the same time as Christopher, a flu featuring 2 days in bed, nausea and other fun things

4. Scheduling an interview (tomorrow!)

5. Buying an out-of-print cookbook by Edna Staebler, who died last September at the age of 100 (!!). She wrote some of the my favourite cookbooks. All the ingredients are things I would have anyway, especially since the recipes are from local people (local produce!), and most of them include little stories that make me chuckle.

6. Christopher finally put up photos from my birthday. See them here! Did I mention there was a chocolate fountain? It rocked.

I think you've all been staring at Chris's disgusting finger for long enough! It's healing nicely, for those who have inquired.

It's been two weeks since I was employed 9–5, and I have done the following things:

• attended an excellent editing seminar, 8-Step Editing
  
• joined the Editor's Association of Canada
  
• read much of the Canadian Press Stylebook, Strunk & White's Elements of Style, and Getting the Words Right
  
• applied for some jobs
  
• tried to figure out HOW to network, as this is the advice everyone gives me
  
• slept (a LOT)
  
• made Ada ride Linda's cat, Max
  
• called Christopher at work to tell him that there was a purring cat half-asleep on my lap, to get him back for all those times he slept in when I had to go to work
  
• watched The Usual Suspects with David and Beckie
  
• made Christopher walk me home because Agnes and Sam kept feeding me tequila shots between rounds of gin and tonic and whatever Agnes could find in the house
  
• tried not to fear unemployment and to remember that this is the part that sucks and that things will improve from here
  
• thought about my website, and decided to keep Faith Dissolved

So, Monday night, Christopher was doing dishes. He'll try to tell you it was out of the goodness of his heart, but really it's because we have a deal that he does dishes and I do laundry. This becomes relevant later on.

He dropped a glass. He tried to catch it. It shattered. A shard of glass bit the tip of his pinky finger off, which bled and bled. And bled. I wrapped it with almost all the gauze we had in the house and put it in ice, but the dressing filled up with blood, so we took that off and it started GUSHING. It was not just dripping, it was jumping off his finger in little spurts. Luckily, I am the type of girl who can agree that yes, dear, that is actually pretty cool, rather than fainting on the spot. (If you're not, you may not want to scroll down. We have cameras! Luckily for you, we do not have a video.)

We decided that we were ill-equipped to deal with such things and opted for the five-minute walk to Mount Sinai Hospital. They re-wrapped it and eventually he got called in, while I waited and read 200 pages of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Apparently the key to getting back into novels is the scarcity of entertainment options in hospital waiting rooms.

They told him that they could not stitch it because there was not enough skin left to stitch. It was re-wrapped and we were told that if it bled through again, to come back. Fast-forward to the next morning:



There was blood on the duvet. There was blood soaked into the mattress. There was blood on the rest of his hand. The dressing was dry and hardened, like a mammoth scab. We went back. They took the dressing off and it has finally clotted:



The doctor re-wrapped it again and said it's a good scab. The dressing has to be on until Friday, and the scab should fall off in about 2 weeks.

So, of course, my darling boyfriend asks the doctor to order him not to do the dishes for a month. Lucky for me, she laughed and said, "You're funny! But no, two weeks will be fine." And he's not allowed to be drunk. One beer only.

It's amazing how many emotions you can go through in 12 hours. The sinking feeling that you have no idea how to dress a wound like this, and what if this happened to your kid? Listening to the Québecois guys beside you in the waiting room and realizing that your French comprehension fled long ago. Trying to remember the last time you've really sat down and read a book for a long period of time. Wondering if he's okay. Being surprised at how strongly protective you feel, how your brain has begun to consider him family. Being told that you can go sit with your "friend" and wishing you had a better word for it. Rolling your eyes because you know that his primary goal when talking to the doctor is to spin this so he gets out of the dishes for longer. Relief that he's joking around with you.



So that, my friends, is how birthday week is going.

I know that Faith Dissolved (FD) has been valuable for other people in their own journeys on the outskirts of Christianity. I know it is linked on many agnostic/atheist/ex-Christian websites as one of the primary deconversion stories on the net. It's long and honest and emotional and angry and sad and sympathetic, and people like it. Some people need it. Deconversion is scary and heart-breaking and it's nice to know you're not alone in it, that someone else survived.

Then there are the people who are insulted or saddened by FD. Perhaps I just tried the wrong kind of Christianity, and wouldn't I like to try Catholicism? Don't I know that Jesus would do anything for me and they pray for me every day? Don't I see how their face falls when they hear phrases like "weak atheism" and "bought a condo with my boyfriend"? I used to be such a nice girl.

The emails I get. My god. Long screeds for or against what I have said. Acquaintances who come out of the woodwork many years later to say that they too have doubts. People who google my former church and find my website instead, and click through to my heresy. Friends who tell me at parties that they have read my site and hot damn they never knew I was such an angry girl. Others who email me to say that I influenced them to become Christian, and what's this about being an atheist?

And all the while, I grow farther away from this experience. It's not that it doesn't affect me anymore. But it affects me less than it did when I wrote FD. I don't think about God every day. I'm not sure I think about God every week, unless I'm chatting with Jo. It's not that I'm worried people will disagree, but that they'll get the wrong impression of who I am now. I don't feel angry anymore.

Jesus isn't my life anymore. Anti-Jesus isn't my life either. If this site is to represent me, how do I keep FD but let it fade from focus at the same time? Is this the sort of thing I want potential employers to read? I can't even make it pseudonymous, because half of the links to FD have my name in them, and Google KNOWS it's me. I suppose I could move it and break all of those links, but that seems wrong somehow.

I'm still thinking about this. I don't even know how to design a personal website that doesn't revolve around a blog anymore.

What do you think?


P.S.: Birthday celebrations were great. Two cheese fondues (Mexican and Parmesan Garlic) and an overwhelmingly great chocolate fountain! A pregnant lady, a 6-month-old, and our 1-year-old neighbour fawning over our cats! My friends are fertile! I love having so many people over and seeing my friends meet each other—you're all my favourites!
P.P.S.: I do take great pleasure in summarizing FD like this: "Dude wouldn't return my calls, I had to call it quits, it was messy."

- not getting kicked out of the symphony
- stealth
- rocking the baby to sleep
- swimming underwater
- playing Hide & Seek
- giving someone the silent treatment
- winning American Idol

It's my birthday tomorrow. The party tonight will feature a chocolate fountain and three cheese fondues. This calls for the rocking out smiley:

\m/ >_< \m/

I want to change the code to be more semantically informative. I want to vastly improve my stylesheets. I want a printer-friendly version. I want to stop using Blogger.

I want to remove a lot of my old writing. I am torn about what to do with Faith Dissolved. Should it stay or should it go now?

I didn't get the permanent position at the place I've been temping, so I want to add a section to promote myself as a freelance editor and coder of websites. I don't want the rest of the site to interfere with that goal.

I am nostalgic for the way the web used to be. There are things I like about it now, but I long for 1999, for 1996. For the original weblogs, for ramblings, for bulletin boards instead of Myspace, for uber.nu and the first google bomb and the early days of MetaFilter and for Andy Pressman's art journals and Dennis Mahoney's grammar lessons, for {the fray}, for WebMonkey! For long thoughtful articles instead of hastily written blog posts. For everyone geeking out in privacy from the cool kids. For the geeks becoming the cool kids in a new environment.

There are things I like now. Flickr is full of beautiful and weird things, and it is both simple and powerful. I think Blogger is a good thing, even though I want to stop using it. I like how social networking is evolving (e.g. Facebook), though I don't participate very much. I am always logged into Gmail. MetaFilter has spawned Ask MetaFilter and MetaFilter Music and MetaFilter Projects and it's all great. Sites like del.icio.us bring me to new and fascinating corners of the web every day. And there's so many bandwagons I haven't jumped on, like boing boing and SlashDot, so there's always something new to discover.

But it's gotten so crowded. So loud. So obnoxious. It's not a respite anymore. It sucks away my evenings just like TV used to, when I still had a TV. There are ads everywhere. We've moved away from "content is king" to "ooh, look at this shiny thing!" There are so many snacks and so few meals. I wonder if blogging has helped my writing by giving me a space to do it so often, or hindered it by making it so informal.

I need to re-evaluate things.