Vicarious Living

When I was growing up, my mom used to say that no one needs soap operas when you live in a small town.

Which is not to say that my small home town was (or is) any more imprudent than anywhere else. It's just that, in a small town, you hear all that's going on, and because everything is condensed, it seems like more.

Nowadays, I live in a city, and I barely know my neighbors, and many of my friends don't know many of my friends. And the only small "community" that I spend time in is my work. And, well, I would never want to watch a soap opera with my office mates as the main characters.

So I have to find other ways to live vicariously.

Luckily, these days, there is the Internet. And, even luckier, some of my friends have pretty interesting lives.

Right now, I've got a Netflicked movie on in the background and someone that I used to know (years ago - although he's still a friend of a friend) is a much bigger presence in it than I was led to believe.

Then there's the other friend of mine who had the John Barrowman sighting last week.

And, of course, Christopher is out in Northern California with a friend of ours this week and I've been getting to see pictures of where they are in some kind of almost-real-time.

There's probably something in there about how the Electronic Age makes the whole world a small town.

But, at the same time, I do kind of miss the days when a small town was the whole world, and vicarious living... well... that came from post cards and phone calls.