I adore the internet. I cannot imagine how I could do my job without email, or how I would survive my job without websurfing breaks throughout the day. I don't need enclopedias or card catalogues to find information, and I don't need a phone book to find phone numbers. I don't need a newspaper subscription to stay caught up on the news. I don't need stamps or envelopes or even a checkbook to pay my bills and manage my finances. Life is better, faster, easier.
The other day a customer service person informed me that in order to change one line of the address on my credit card statement, I needed to WRITE and MAIL a LETTER to the company in South Dakota. I informed her that I understood that might be the way they still did things over there in India, but here in American nothing is accomplished via letters. Ok, so I didn't actually. I just clued her in to the absurdity of having to send a letter with the exact same information I was giving her right then over the phone. Then then I hung up and tried a different customer service number, and the American woman who answered and I had the matter settled in two minutes and wished each other a pleasant afternoon.
But there are some things I don't like about this age of internet business and commerce. For one thing, all the different log-in names and passwords and pass phrases and security questions and security images and whatnot. I appreciate the need for it, obviously, as I do not want to wake up one morning and find that my entire life has been hijacked by some opportunist immigrant. At the same time, the amount of content I have to keep track of to log in and accomplish things is daunting. When will we reach the era of retinal scan website log-ins? Because I'm getting tired of trying to remember passwords like hungryhungryhippo4ever. And as scammers and hackers get smarter, the requirements for creating passwords get tougher, and I'm running out of ideas.
Speaking of running out of ideas...creating an email address for one of the major email services is now nearly impossible. It took me almost half an hour to find an email address that wasn't already taken. It was annoying, but more so depressing. I used to believe I was somewhat creative; now I think of creativity as just a matter of getting to something first. Luck is always lurking as the primium mobile of the universe, apparently.
Anyway, as much as I love the internet and email and all of that, I am still adjusting to the pace of the virtual. I sometimes find myself fantasizing about a time when everything that could ever be important would show up in the mailbox outside your house in neat envelopes. Tangible and present, things you could put on the fridge or set on a side table or file in a letter tray. Reminders that could actually remind you because they were in your line of sight at some point, because they were next to the keys or between you and the ice cream. E-mail is a screen you can open and close and then completely forget about until oh shit.
I've always enjoyed and excelled at organizing the tangible, but now I'm learning how to order my intangible life. It's awkward for me, and it's an awkwardness the Russian lover cannot begin to appreciate because he is practically one with the internet. The internet for him is like some indwelling holy spirit; he can do all things through the internet which gives him strength. But me...well, it's like I have a huge crush on the internet and the internet doesn't even know I'm alive.
Slowly, I'm getting better at this new internet-based way of being alive. It's a crucial element in successfully fulfulling my personal theme for 2008, which I've casually designated in the back of my mind as The Year of Getting My Shit Together, For Real This Time.
I think that the Russian lover is not entirely convinced that it is not still The Year of Picking Up After My Girlfriend Who Cannot Completely Get Her Shit Together. Or, as he would likely refer to it, The Year of Improvement Noted, Grade: F.
It is all in an effort to make 2009 my Year of No Bad Surprises Caused By Irrational Lapses in Judgement or General Incompetence, i.e. The Year of Finally Doing Awesome.