Misery Loves Company

Once upon a time I used to join message boards to network with people and get support from people in similar life situations as me.  What I noticed then was that on boards of thousands of people, you find the select few that you can actually talk with.  I have made a handful of friends this way who I have talked to over the years, and some I have had the pleasure of meeting.  In some cases these people are easier to talk to than people who I see in my day to day life.  In some cases, I feel like I need to explain myself less to them as I'm not as afraid to say things or explain things.  Worst case, I turn off my computer and never hear from them again.

After some time, my life changed, the boards shut down, and now the world uses Facebook groups.  They're not nearly as intuitive for a group chat setting as message boards were.  You lose posts, you miss posts, and people seem to be more vindictive and more open to sharing what you post.  I have also noticed the level of snarkiness has raised in these settings.  Not to say that I don't love some good snark, but it feels like it's Mean Girls and there's no safe place in the quad to go.  These groups are meant for support.  To lean on someone who has a similar situation to yours, or is going through something you have come out of.  Unfortunately, they seem to be more for places for people to commiserate about how bad they think they have it and just want to play the "woe is me" game. 

Don't get me wrong.  I have had my days where I just want to vent.  I need to get everything out of my system and be able to move on with it.  The problem may be with the layout of the Facebook groups.  Miserable posts get lots of responses.  Which in turn pushes them to the top of the pile.  So you see these posts so much more often than the ones who just want to know if someone has a good book reccomendation. 

It's unfortunate that so many people just want to wallow.  I try my best to always have a positive response ready for someone who is having a down time.  Not that it's trite and not that I'm trying to make light of a situation, but trying to help give another perspective on what they have going on.  I like to help my friends, and if someone wants nothing more than for me to tell them the world is terrible and will continue to be that way so they should just give up.. not gonna happen. 

I'm not sure where I was going with all of this.  There's been a lot going on in my life recently and I've been hoping for a way to change my perspective.  I'm working on a "fake it till you make it" course of action right now, where I keep listing the good things of the situation, even if I'm not one hundred percent sure that's what will come of it.  At the end of the day I have my health, my friends, my family, a place to sleep and food to eat.  I guess what I'm aiming at is, if more people tried to have a more positive outlook, maybe so many wouldn't be so surly all the time? 

When you realize how old you are

 

Every now and again it hits me exactly how different things are for kids now than they were for me.  Some days I totally feel in my 30s, while other days I still feel like I'm 16.  Each year in the middle of summe I wind up with this huge wave of nostalgia, wishing I could just be at summer camp again.  This year is no different in those regards.

I follow the camp ground that I used to go to on Facebook.  I found their page this winter through another friend who worked at the camp when I did and was happy to see they posted pictures of the site.  The grounds were always so serene for me and while I can't physically be there now, being able to look at the pictures help to bring me back there.

This is where the here and now remind me how different times are.  The camps running now are posting updates for parents on their page.  A day by day update of pictures, as well as live streams of some of their activities.  While I would love to be at camp every day, I am so glad that my childhood antics are not able to be documented in this way.  I have piles of old pictures, taken with physical film and printed at Walgreens.  What winds up online is what I choose to scan and upload, if I choose to at all.  I made some amazing friends, amazing memories, and had some amazing times.  Lucky for me, those are mine, and not all of cyber world.

Don't get me wrong, as a parent I can totally appreciate having a way to glimpse that my child is having fun at summe camp.  But even for week long camps, writing a letter and receiving mail as the only way to keep in touch with home was fun, and gave you that illusion that you were a million miles away from civilization.  There's something nice and centering about being away from it all.  One day I'll visit again.