A Life Less Ordinary

Its been too long. 

But I suppose sometimes you just don't have all that much to say. And that too can be a good thing. 

I often find myself at a loss for words when people ask me that most innocuous of questions "What's up?" And I rummage through my mind for a coherent, robust answer worthy of this eponymous query. Sure,  I can tell the rhetorical what's-up from one of those probing, searching, investigative ones. But the discomfort I feel at the latter is becoming something of a social handicap. 

And I have never been more acutely aware of this handicap.

For this I place the blame squarely on the shoulders of that wonderful warm shiny gooey thing called facebook. My friends (facebook friends that is) all seem to have highly exciting lives peppered with occasional drama, lots of fun times and most importantly a definitive road map of where this exciting life is going to take them next. (Explanatory status message coming up...) 

I used to be one of those people in the pre-facebook era. Figured out, with much less self-doubt and anxiety about where everything is going to end up. Now here I am, wondering what will be while the rest of the world is sending me live updates of lives being lived (or so the facebook messiahs would have me believe) 

Never has the phrase "Get a life" seemed more ironic. Because now, you can! 

The cup of life that is social networking is always on the up and up, never rock-bottom low mixing with the dregs of yesterday. So when one stares into it , rarely do you get to see rock bottom. But when you do hit rock-bottom - and everyone does at some point - even a lame little "what's up" will make you want to punch someone in the face. 

Sometimes I have to shake myself out of the ennui of keeping up appearances. Its not the harmless banter that bothers. Its the feeling of constantly being sized up. The whole idea of living your life like a roster of what you did-who you met-where you went.  It might be worth asking then - "How would you live your life if you knew no one was watching?" 

Its unsettling - this feeling of living your own life as if you had been for the longest time, merely an opening act in a great variety show. Always on the outside, waiting for the show to start. Stealing a glance every now and then at the audience from behind the red velvet curtain. And while we stare diligently at cursor on screen, tomorrow becomes today becomes yesterday all at once. 

And I worry more at this than my seeming lack of ambition, goals and road-maps-to-a-better-life..... because how will there be nostalgia, if I cant't even remember living?