Navigating the Two Realms

I'm scared. Very much so. It's midnight and I'm lying in bed, my mind restless as I try to unravel the digital strands of my presence on the Interwebs and order them in a more structured manner. It feels as though my online life is getting out of hand and Twitter is the final frontier facing me and then total virtual chaos. I'm on almost every other online social platform: Facebook, Google+, Blogspot, Shelfari, Linked In, You Tube, BBM, Mxit and a myriad of forums and other bobbles. My digital life is just more than I can live - it's too overwhelming!

Navigating The Circular Ruins of my mind.

People feel hassled and harried in the 'real' world as is, what with the breakneck pace of daily living to put food on the table and hang a 42-inch LCD TV on the wall. Then there's a whole other landscape (or is it more mindscape?) to navigate in form of the digital frontier - especially with the rise of social networks. Life is much easier now in terms of communication than is was some years back and it's so much more difficult at the same time. This paradox doesn't bother us much I've noticed, it's just the way it is these days and we go with the flow. We adapt and survive I guess. Also, we don't. I'm being coy with you aren't I? With all these little paradoxes. Well, it's because of how schizophrenic we've become - pieces of our beings divided between the 'real' and virtual realms. For the most part we cope with the strain quite well and then, to paraphrase William Butler Yeats, there are the times when things fall apart and our centre can no longer hold.

Then there's a whole other landscape (or is it more mindscape?) to navigate in form of the digital frontier - especially with the rise of social networks.

I'm a little OCD about things and like a certain degree of order to my online life, which is at odds with the chaotic nature of the Internet. It's difficult to keep track of the pieces of our selves that we put on social platforms. I always feel as though I've no real control of my virtual existence and that scares me at night! My dreams are riddled with post apocalypse scenes of Terminators roaming blasted landscapes and enslaving humans to do the god of technology's evil bidding. This, of course, is the rather exaggerated fear of an overactive mind and it holds very little water but it is symbolic of the relationship we have with the Internet and navigating that space.

We are connected to so many people and share with them our day to day activities and thoughts even though we don't really 'know' them all that well. Sure, you went to primary school with Thato and Shannon but when was the last time you really got to talk to them? It's nice having the option to catch up at the push of a button but we rarely actually reach out and do so. It's not because we don't want to, it's simply because we have too much choice and it's overwhelming. I've noticed that BBM already cuts into my time doing everything else. Whilst I'm reading, writing, eating, watching a movie and all manner of other life activities that menacing flashing red light appears on my Blackberry to inform me of a message awaiting my rapid response. Balancing 'real' life and digital life is a difficult act.

People keep telling me to make the jump onto the Twitter wagon as it will make it easier to connect with my friends because Facebook is dying. I can see the need to make the shift somewhat because people are always talking about my online activities like blogging on Twitter and I have to hear from other people that something I wrote is popular on Twitter. But I worry about the balancing act and how much more of my limited time I'll be spending on Twitter as opposed to being out and about staring at clouds.

I'm interested to know how you guys manage the balancing act. Is it a seamless transition navigating the two realms or, much like my experience; is it a herky jerky fumbling between the two? Please let me know.

The Road So Far

Past,
Future;
They all merge into this present moment
I’m a dude on the road –
I dare to disturb the universe
Within these pages
There are snippets and snatches
Of a life lived

- Charles Siboto


Hi there goodbuddy,

Navigating these circular ruins is proving to be more difficult than I imagined it would be and I’m having a hard time getting over my quarter-life crisis. I feel that I should be doing more with my life but I’m not sure what I actually mean by 'more'. I don’t feel like I’m really living at all to be honest. I’m not enjoying my work and studies as much as I did about two years ago and I feel slightly distanced from my friends and family. They all seem to be so much more alive than I am; they have problems that they care about solving and they’re all in ‘touch’ with their lives. When they’re happy they actually really look happy and when they’re in the doldrums they look pathetic... but pathetic in that way depressed people should look, you know. I, on the other hand, just feel murky. There are people out there whose lives are in total ruin and, in my darker moments, I think that even they have it better, they at least have ruins to work with. I just don’t have a clue what I’m doing! I’m neither coming nor going, nothing happens, it’s like I’m stuck in Beckett’s non-story, Waiting for Godot.

Usually I’m the first person to tell you how amazing life is and how much magic there is to be found if one takes some time to look around but that magic can turn out to be black magic at times – one million megatons of destruction. So all I’m saying is to be careful and always prepared for them (that mysterious bunch that I’m pretty sure are The Laughing Men Co.) dropping the bomb rather than not. I’m grateful for the fact that my life has been fairly pleasant up to this point but as a human being I get to whine about everything and nothing once in a while because ultimately I’m an ungrateful little bastard.

Don’t worry, though, it’s not all doom and gloom, I have that nastiest of diseases known as indefatigable optimism and even in my darkest hours I wear a little smile on my face and have the not-at-all-naive belief that the best is yet to come. I have no clue what I am to do about my quarter-life crisis other than to work harder at my studies (which I’m not actually in the mood to do to tell you the truth) and to kick off my Goodbuddies book drive. It’s Springing and I want to enjoy some sun without some stupid voice in the back of my head whispering that I’m an epic failure. They (these people again!) say that one foot up and one foot down is the way to London town... or some such... and right now London town seems as good a destination as any. Some of my favourite Poets lived there and they have the Thames in which to kill oneself if the business of living becomes too much to bear.

With great consideration I’ll choose the path to follow
I’ll pick up my sadness, madness and new-found gladness
And together we’ll walk down that winding path
Singing our tuneless song into the sunset
- Charles Siboto

Attack of the Bloodthirsty Couch: Zombies of Doom

Dear Constant reader of a writer in peril,

Here I am again, still trying to escape the circular ruins with only minimal success. It’s been a few months since the bloodthirsty couch sent its arachnid minions after me and I’ve only just survived wave after wave of their attacks by the enamel of my teeth, until now that is... . Instead of just outright killing me the damned creatures enjoy torturing me and seeing me writhe in pain.

A few nights ago I woke up with a start at the sound something scratching at my window. Now, you should know that I’m a fan of cheesy B-grade horror movies and one thing I’ve learned from them is that you do not head towards danger because you will end up either dead or serving as a host for some alien parasite. Also, I’m the token black guy who gets killed first if he’s stupid enough to go anywhere near the danger. Being the survivor that I am I decided to just stay put and see what happens next. I sat up in my bed for five nerve-wrecking minutes and nothing happened... maybe it was a stray cat or something. Eventually I fell asleep again and pretty much forgot about the incident until the following evening when I woke up to the sound of voices at my window. With my heart beating a tattoo onto my chest I got out of bed as quietly as I could and grabbed the empty bottle of wine next to my bookcase and crawled towards the window. The voices outside turned out to be a couple of lunatics just having a merry ol’ chat on my porch in the middle of the night! I switched on my light and they left. Then I started thinking of the previous night’s incident and wondered whether they are connected. My brain is groggy at the best of times so expecting it to make complex connections at the dead of night was really just me expecting too much from the poor bastard and so eventually I gave up and went back to bed.

The previous paragraph has very little to do with what the rest of this post is going to be about now that I think about it... but it does serve the purpose of letting you know what the state of my mind has been for the last few months.

Some time ago our geyser burst and the guy who came to fix it didn’t put the ceiling cover back on in the bathroom and every time I go to the loo I have to stare into the inky blackness of the space above the ceiling and wonder what my bloodthirsty couch’s arachnid minions are cooking up. I can hear them crawling around in the space above the ceiling in the dead of night and I’m scared for my life. I’ve not been sleeping for almost two weeks now! I sit up at night, drinking copious amounts of coffee, with a screwdriver within reach just in case they try something. I’ve even taken to pushing furniture against my door in an attempt to barricade my room.

The sounds are getting louder every night and this has led me to believe that the spiders in the ceiling are more like the head crabs from the Half-Life games and that they’re dragging people into the ceiling through the opening in the bathroom and turning them into zombies to ensure my doom. I have to invest in a shotgun and a chainsaw before their zombie army is ready for attack.

Pray for me my dearest reader, for I very much doubt that I’ll live thought the coming week.