More is Better - Ship in a bottle (Amy)

Recently, I was accused of being the busiest woman in the world.  I'm pretty sure that Hillary Clinton and moms with small children have me beat, but perhaps it isn't that far off.  It often seems that life is being forfeited working full-time at an under-staffed start-up biopharmaceutical company, going to law school in the evenings, trying to date with the hope of landing another warm body in my bed from time to time (instead of having to cuddle with phone and laptop), wedging in time at the gym to increase the odds that men landing in my bed will look more like Brad Pitt than Philip Seymour Hoffman, trying desperately to salvage friendships that I know I no longer deserve, all the while keeping fingers crossed that at the end of the day I'll have enough mental energy to work on the world-revolutionizing novel that I've been penning for the last five years, which may very well be the only thing of significance in my short life.  So when a friend recruited me to join this blogging network and I readily agreed, what was going through my mind?  Why do I pile on more and more without a second thought?

In my few moments of downtime this week while traveling on the east coast for business, I pondered this issue.  We are all told growing up that even good things must be handled in moderation, but it occurred to me as I watched two little boys ordering sodas last evening that perhaps we've been lied to all our lives.  What if more is better?  The boys told the waitress that they wanted cherries in their sodas, and when she asked "How many?" they didn't know how to answer.  How many is enough?  The only way to know is to eat them until one is satisfied, so I wasn't surprised when one of the boys answered "All of them." 

I found the parallels to my own life to be quite striking.  In the internet era, where it seems that everyone is posting their opinions in one form or another, I've been wondering why it took a stranger-turned-date-turned

-friend to coax me into the ring, which is really more of a space absorbing culture than 2-dimensional circle of critics.  I reason that there are two bases: 1) I'm afraid of what will pour out of my brain when I turn on the faucet, and 2) the idea that others may be given free parking passes to the white screen of my thoughts makes me want to curl into a ball and pull a metal basket over my head.  So why add this particular thing to my already wobbly Jenga tower?

People scarcely venture outside of their comfort zones just for the hell of it. My justification is this: Soon enough people and/or machines will be reading our thoughts, and I will no longer be able to keep what's been locked in my head from escaping. With the strong influx of information these days, how often do we really get to digest it, to think for ourselves and produce rather than just absorb and regurgitate?  Perhaps this isn't the appropriate stage for testing new theories, but I'm an experimentalist, so here goes.  Even novelists are moving away from caring about protecting and investing in a small number of works and towards disseminating even careless products to the masses via the web with the expectation that enough people will see it and spread it such that its significance will flow into perpetuity.  Everyone is trying to make their mark, to figure out where they fit into the huge social network that is life, and sometimes you have to cast a very broad net to find even the smallest point that sticks.

So, it's really all about increasing the odds.  More is better when it comes to information dissemination, cherries in kids' sodas, and even seemingly random (and expensive) routes of education.  So why also add blogging to the mix?  Because there's no way to know what's enough until it is.  And until I get there, all I can say is, Bring it on. More is better.

Comments

[William]

Yay Amy! I enjoy your thoughts; I look forward to reading more. =)

[Rachel]

I'm right there with you sister. I look forward to reading more.

[Nikki]

I love the way you tell a story...
Can't wait for the next chapter!
:)

[Nessie]

You live in a boat?

[wade Schuerman]

You are a beautiful and well educated woman. Are you dating? You are young and have plenty of time for Mr. Right or is that something you are not desiring? I can't imagine you not having a lot of men that find you attractive, interesting and a good catch. Are you interested in more opportunities?

[wade]

You are a beautiful and well educated woman. Are you dating? You are young and have plenty of time for Mr. Right or is that something you are not desiring? I can't imagine you not having a lot of men that find you attractive, interesting and a good catch. Are you interested in more opportunities?