At the weekend a ‘friend’ of mine wrote on Facebook that it summed up 90% of her Facebook friends that everyone was discussing Amy Winehouse and no-one was talking about the attacks in Norway. She said that there is nothing more ‘real than Facebook’, and if people weren’t talking about it, they weren’t upset by it.
This really made me think about the way we interact with social media. Personally I use Facebook very little, and if I do it’s only to talk to friends I can’t contact via another medium. I find the idea that Facebook could directly reflect what I’m thinking about or what I’m feeling pretty absurd. In fact, I would find it kind of distasteful if that was how people were choosing to express how tragic and deeply, deeply sad the attacks in Norway are. Because there really aren’t any words to describe it, and to try and do so on Facebook (moreso the implication that if you don’t, you don’t care about it) just doesn’t fit for me. For me, Facebook is the realm of LOLs, and likes – of trite superficiality. But what about blogging? Are there things you do, and don’t say on your blog? Things you would, and wouldn’t say because it doesn’t feel right?
Personally I like to think of my blog as a positive place – a place for documenting things I’ve seen, or places I’ve been. Things that make me happy (often adventures, and food!). But I sometimes struggle with what to share, partly because of my readership, and partly because I don’t want this to be a place for moans or negativity.
I wasn’t going to write about it on here (because it didn’t seem like something one would blog about) but on Monday I was a few cars behind a car crash on my journey home from work. The traffic suddenly came to an immediate halt, and after a period of silence the cars in front of me started doing U-turns and eventually the Police came and closed the road (I didn’t see the actual crash, just a car off the road). I learnt in the news the next day that the 35-year-old male driver, died. After the initial ‘Sliding Doors’ type thoughts (what if I’d left work a few minutes later, etc), it made me think of the tragedy of it all – a man on his way home from work who would never see his family again, and how life is so fragile and unknown. That thought has stayed with me for a few days. What would you do if you knew that it was going to be your last journey home? Why haven’t you already done it?
In the spirit of ‘seizing the day’, we are continuing to try and fill our evenings with fun things (not just the weekends!) and so last night we went for another walk in the forest before dinner. It makes everything better after a difficult day to see the sun shining over the trees and watch horses swishing their tails and bees buzzing around the flowers! Here are a few snaps.
