As of last week, I have been blogging for six years. There weren’t that many of us when I started, and making friends with those few fellow bloggers was exciting. There was a stimulating feeling of camaraderie and an open sharing of who we really were. I made, perhaps, a dozen blogger friends, and I still feel connected to most of them.
Now there’s Facebook, which is the “social network” to which many of my original blogger friends belong, and so I can keep up with them all using that application as a portal. I play Scrabulous with some of them, and interact with them (virtually) more than I do with any of my friends in the real world. Of course, that’s the isolated nature of my life as a caregiver.
One of the bloggers I know has more than 300 Facebook “friends.” Umm. I can’t imagine even having that many casual acquaintances.
I guess I have no need for friends on paper (metaphorically, of course, in this virtual world). I like to actually interact with my friends, and I only have so much time and energy to do so.
So I try to keep my “social network” friends at a minimum
But now I’m in a new network , a network of “third-age women, ” one of “…women growing old with joy and zest, wit and wisdom.” And I am confronted with the challenge of how to participate in that network authentically. It’s a chance for some new virtual friends with whom I share, if nothing else, the experiences of age.
But how many friends do I need? And, more importantly, how many friends do I have the time and energy to get to know.
I haven’t figured that out yet.