The first social network I joined was LiveJournal back in 2001. At the time, I thought of it purely as an online journaling system. I didn't understand how the friending mechanism worked, nor the deceptive name applied to the feature (something that has thankfully been replaced with "following" on other sites). I often wrote entries there expecting no one to ever read them. It often felt like writing letters to no one in particular, then casting them upon the will of the four winds to whomever would find them.

The anonymity emboldened me. I wrote about things that were actually on my mind, instead of bottling them up as I had been raised. Frustration, fear, worry, depression, quixotism, fascination, and humor. Many say that the internet is where people put on masks; to me, it was the first place I was able to take mine off.

Things changed of course. LiveJournal became all the rage, creating a sprawling online community of people. I continued to write, but often with growing apprehension. I slowly began closing the loop and locking things down. No longer was it a wide open vista, but a room. The door was often open and the windows could be easily seen through, but there was a clearer separation between the Internet at large, and my little section.

Events occurred that forced me to close those openings completely. The windows were shuttered, the door was closed and locked. Little did I realize that the supply of fresh air was now also depleting. I ventured out rarely, and often only to lock things down all the more. Bars were installed. Boards nailed to the wall, cartoon-fashion.

Social networking often works the best for outgoing and open individuals that feel they have little to hide, or no one worth hiding from. My pessimism can't help but see that attitude as naive.

Today, the social networking scene has exploded across the entire world. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, and the new contender, Google Buzz. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of information one is required to read every day in order to say current. And lately, I often feel much like this:

I always feel disconnected and surreal whenever I return to the US after an international assignment.

The first thing I notice is the change in sound. After three weeks in Germany, the sound and rhythm of American English sounds oddly foreign. I found this welcome on my previous trips, but this time I found myself missing the distinctive pattern of German before boarding my first flight home. Even the sound of my own voice seems oddly out of place.

The second thing I notice is that my phone works. When abroad, I have three phones with me at all times. I have my personal blackberry, my work blackberry, and often I have a standard mobile native to the country. It didn't occur to me until the last week that I could pop out the SIM card from my native phone, and pop it into my work blackberry to reduce my technological baggage. My personal blackberry typically has the mobile network switched off for cost reasons. It only becomes a useful network device when entering into the range of an open Wifi access point. Once connected, it furiously downloads a backlog of emails, tweets, facebook status posts, and podcasts.

The third thing is money. When I landed state-side, I stopped by a Starbucks and ordered a blended coffee drink. I baulked when I first saw the price -- 5.30 -- which I had assumed as in Euros for the moment. The cognitive dissonance was even more pronounced when I realised I could use my bank card to pay instead of putting down a pale blue five Euro note.

My fingers still entangle themselves on special characters when typing on an American keyboard, expecting the needed keys to be in a different configuration.

I can't say that this isn't unexpected. When I first heard I would be working on this assignment, I made the decision to open myself to the experience. Instead of fighting against the language -- or analysing it mercilessly -- I chose not to think about it. Instead of trying to translate what I heard, I would listen and pick up what I could. This unconscious method has little in the way of control, but oddly, seems to work better than anything I've tried previously.

The net affect was the creation of a new headspace in which German sounded normal -- even if I didn't understand everything. Likewise, cultural artifacts like money also seemed normal. When I return to the US, this headspace persists, making my own native culture seems oddly foreign.

Eventually, it'll wear off. Green money will seem the norm. The flat, monotone of an American voice will seem customary. The only problem is that I don't want to let go...

Two nights ago my vacation started. I've set aside two weeks of time away from work, away from software training and IT consulting. I'll be spending part of it with a friend in Seattle, and the other half at home. You would think that I'd be thrilled for this opportunity to relax, to unwind, to recharge for the next round of professional tasks. You'd think that.

Instead, I'm absolutely dreading it.

Years ago I would spend the days and weeks prior to a vacation imagining what I would do with my reprieve from the working world. I'd often use it as an opportunity to make a push in the development of one of my current projects. If I were lacking an "active" project, I'd start one anew. The end result was to work myself into a blissful creative exhaustion.

Thinking about this, there was really only one time this actually worked. Over a decade ago, after months and months of thought and design, I spent three wonderful days attempting to write a video game. 

It was early in what became a five year effort. At the time I was creating a MYST-clone set in cyberpunk world of virtual reality. I was coding in C++ on MacOS 7. I started with almost nothing, but ended in a small program that would navigate a single stationary node of the game world. It responded to interface events, displayed graphics with special effects. I can't remember if the program was able traverse multiple nodes, but it was certainly an accomplishment with my developing programming skills.

By Monday night of the three day weekend, I was exhausted yet nearly euphoric with success. I was amazed how much I accomplished in those 72 hours. With only a little bit more time, I thought.

I didn't realize how much more I had to do. I hadn't externalized the data in files. It couldn't play integrated video. There was no plot, no story, nothing but a few slides rendered in a consumer-grade 3D modeler. To call it a "game" at this point is quaint, maybe a bit amusing to me today. 

I'm two days into my vacation, and I still haven't decided how to spend my time. Mostly, I've frittered away each day watching videos, surfing the 'net, and wishing I were going back to work tomorrow. Instead, I'm packing a messenger bag and a new carry-on rollaway for a 1300 mile flight tomorrow afternoon. 

And I'm dreading it.

I feel I owe everyone an apology for my insensitive (if honest) query in my last post. I obviously wasn't as ponderous as I usually expect of me, and instead let my frustration and lack of ability to act influence my writing.

Several commentors made excellent point both on, and off the comment threads. One pointed out quiet insightfully that even thought we live with the mistakes of previous generations, we also tend to make our own mistakes of similar gravity. It's easy when one is frustrated to point fingers at everyone else and scream, "Stop fucking things up for me!" This neglects the mess people often make for themselves. Furthermore, the same commentor points out that the available data at the time didn't properly communicate the implications of problems like larger families or burning fossil fuels. 

Perhaps for the first time in civilized history, humanity is dealing with a complex system on a scale we are only beginning to grasp. Chaos theory, memetic evolution, emergence found in weather patterns, alteration of the climate -- all systems we can only begin to simulate with only the most powerful systems on the planet. Most people have a difficult enough time trying to figure out a personal budget let alone fathom what the beat of a butterfly's wings are capable of producing. Maslow's triangle of needs limiting our scope.

Back when I believed in things such as fate, I often wondered what I could do to help prevent the coming downfall of humanity. I'm not terribly skilled in mathematics, or biology, or chemistry. I tried each, of course, as I'm have a love of knowledge. It was, however, only with computers I felt I had skill or any sort of future. From a practical standpoint, the information technology industry is terribly wasteful. Entire landfills compose of old and broken cell phones. Toxic chemicals are used to produce LCDs and etch silicon substrate. Operating systems and hardware are designed around the concept of a constant, cheap power supply, and are no where nearly optimized for power-savings. How can I help? The simple fact is that I'm having enough trouble getting my life in order to say nothing of reducing my carbon footprint.

I'm no better than all the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.

I tend to view myself as a fixer, a cerebral sort of mechanic with a mind full of learning, culture, and cheesy movies. With that world-view, it's difficult for me to sit idling back when things are obviously broken. It's not just that I want to fix it, it's that I'm compelled to fix it. When I'm unable to fix something, it's terribly frustrating to me. Lately, I've been hearing more and more about how seeming everything is breaking. A prominent biologist claims we're on the cusp of a 6th great extinction event. The oceanic dead zones are expanding. Crops fail and energy prices skyrocket. It's not difficult to look at each as a piece of a larger complex system on the edge of collapse. And I can't fix it. 

Hell, I can't even warn people about it by writing or so much as win a political argument. I'm rubbish at both. If I wasn't struggling to support my own Pyramid of Needs, I'd have more time sit and contemplate and research. Perhaps then I could construct a convincing argument. Or maybe not.

When chatting about this on IM with a friend, she conveyed something telling. "We're in a struggle with stupid people," she typed. A century ago, people thought that nature was infinite and boundless. If we clear-cut the forests, it wouldn't matter as there are more forests. Cue the Amazon Rain Forest. How much of that are we still losing today as others support their Pyramid of Needs? "The problem is, there are more stupid people, and they don't want to listen." The culture of this nation (and increasingly other nations) honor and hail the stupid, and denigrate the intelligent. Anti-intellectualism runs rampant world-wide. After all, no one wants to be thought of stupid, nor does any one want to listen to prognostications of doom.

This incident is tangential to a key personal observation, but it's time for me to continue my Atlas and the Pyramid routine.

She had forgotten the simple relaxation of housework. Most of the time, it was a recurring annoyance. Lately she hardly had the time to pick up her apartment, wash the dishes, or even do laundry. Her life had become a blur of airports, hotels, and clients from opposite ends of the nation. The little time she was home, such mundane tasks only got in her way.

Tonight, however, was different. She had received word that she would be home for the rest of the month. She had decided to take advantage of the upcoming spring holiday and put in for an additional day off. No one questioned or debated her request; it was approved without protest. She quietly breathed a sigh of relief when approval came in. She hadn't had a day off since New Year's, and constant parade of rush assignments and last minute clients had worn on her. Everything seemed to slow and stop. For the first time in what must have been weeks, she felt grounded enough to clean her apartment.

It wasn't a complex operation. While the place looked shabby, it was merely disorganized. The dishes had to be done and were. The clothes she had left out to dry on two collapsible racks were ready and were folded. Loose items on tables, chairs, and the floors were gathered and put away.

She didn't listen to music or play a movie to keep her company. Sounds drifted in her open windows of the nearby highway, neighbors in other units, and a small Latino family watching their little boy play ball. Occasionally, between shouts of Spanish came a dull rubber thud as the ball rebounded against the sidewalk.

Nor did she place some topic in her mind for debate. She simply detached it from the worries and frustrations of the day and existed in the now. Slowly, like a knotted muscle, her mind began to relax. The feeling of it was almost too much to bear if she paid it too much attention – the relief of months of pent up stress. She felt tears welling up around her eyes, but put the feeling behind her before they could peak.