Taking refuge in the digital space
When the world outside is a bit too much it's nice to come back to the safety and controlled calm of my computer. I know to many it can seem an illusory peace — after all a digital space is completely virtual — but to me that's not the case. Instead, it is a very real place, much like my office or my bedroom, one in which my mind can borrow into and entertain itself with other things, forgetting about what's happening out there for a bit. It's a grounding place, a resting space, and sometimes also a maddening one, but I know that here it's only me and myself.
It sounds a bit austere, and to be sure, it is. There's no one else here in the digital realm, and the only things around me that have a modicum of personality are the furniture. Some of it I've crafted myself, a fact on which I take a generous pinch of pride and pleasure, and others have been graciously given to me by others, the fruits of their own efforts freely shared. The only interaction with other (human) intelligences happens through small windows — websites, blogs, the odd micro-blog, emails — enough to not feel alone, but we're still each in our own virtual submarine, looking out at the sky through our personal collection of periscopes.
I don't mind that it's this way, I actually enjoy the separation, the allowance it gives to talk about things of the soul and the heart, to say things I wouldn't dare say in my real life.
What initially seems as separation bringing us closer than we would ever be if we were to meet out there.