Reconnect?

Still working on it a little bit and finding the right balance, but I jump on the facebook bandwagon a little over a month ago.

There's a whole lot of random crap people have to say out there! Oh my goodness! There's also some really great things people have to say! In the past month+, I've started reconnecting with my two best friends from childhood, gotten to see different sides of family members and gotten to know them better than the once a year family party, and peeked into my friend's lives. That sounds a little creepy, but I don't mean it in the creepy way. I've also at least semi-started to reconnect with friends from college, high school, past jobs, and really, every time of my life I guess.

There's a bit of me that's very excited about this. Some of these people were the most important to me at the time. We were friends for reasons. The flip side of that is that we also lost touch for reasons probably. But, I also know I'm a different person than I was a year ago let alone 5, 10 or 20 years ago.

My childhood friends are super exciting to me. I don't want to be overwhelming and obnoxious (well, no more than I actually am) and jump and hug and brain vomit all over them, but in reality, that's what I want to do. The three of us have kids similar aged-ish and I would love for my kids to form friendships with their kids and have that continuity. THAT would be super cool to me. Good people raising awesome kids together. Yeah, I'm all about that!

It's been a long time since I've talked to these women, but I know their base character is wonderful. Now it's the little dance of, "hey, wanna be my friend?" Not just a facebook "friend" because we all know what that actually means at this point, but an actual, "I know you, like you anyway and enjoy spending time with you" friendship. But I'm nervous about it. I don't know or remember why we lost touch. I was probably pretty preoccupied by a certain boy (reconnected with him too kinda) and probably just trying to figure out who I was and how I wanted the world to see me. Well, that didn't work quite right I guess. But, it's now been a long time, I know who I am and... the world stil doesn't see me as I see me most of the time, but oh well. I don't care the same way I used to. Again, the maturity of my 30's.

I kinda want to just have a big backyard BBQ and invite everyone over and love all over them but that doesn't really do people much justice I suppose.

The title of this post is probably the best I've had yet. It really is a question about if this whole facebook thing is really connective. It's a bit voyeristic or completely voyeristic depending on the person. I actually want to re-establish relationships and that's going to take more than random facebook posts and what people put of themselves online.

I'm limiting myself in how much I'm on facebook since I recognize it's role in my life. Even with it being limited, it's still added online time. Kids are sleeping, at least almost all the time, if I'm on facebook but it's still something that Hubs and I each spend some time on when there's other things we could be doing. Facebook won't ruin or marriage or anything like that, but the laundry pile isn't getting dealt with quite as fast and the car isn't getting cleaned out as often. Not problems, but does reconnecting online detract from my actual life? That's the balance of having both that I'm striving for. It's still at least a little bit of a question. Fortunately, it's very easy to say "bye facebook!" and not look back if needed.