"How sweet it would seem, once more just to dream in the silvery moonlight..."

Sometimes I feel really old. Not like in that "Oh no, I have a gray hair" or "here come some crows feet" kind of way. But in that way of sometimes not getting new things - new trends, ultra brand-new stuff. It's like it doesn't make sense to me or I can't understand how something so utterly new and potentially disposable can become the center of someone's word. Don't people understand trends and fickle attentions and "flavor of the minute?" I mean when I was in college grunge was never going to die. And then grunge shot itself in the head with a rifle. When I was in college my very wise friend Andre Young said that a sign of aging is when you don't understand a trend. Like even if something isn't your thing you can get why people are into it. But if you don't get it then it's because you're not young enough to understand it. We both agreed we didn't "get" rave culture and huge plastic necklaces, candy bracelets and dizzyingly endless loops of generic techno. Every now and then I still see someone sporting those huge pants and brightly colored necklace and I feel a tiny, sweet smile of nostalgia bubbling under my disbelief that someone is still dressing that way.

I hate the word "vlogger". I know it's a silly thing to hate, really. It's a word. It's intangible. It's not doing anything to hurt me. But something about it just pisses me off. I think it's because I find it really silly and yet also humorless. I feel like every time I encounter "vlogging" it's taken SO seriously by the persons involved in it even if the topic is totally funny. It's the same thing with "blogging" except now we have to see faces and hear voices. And it's touted like it will change the world forever and never die. How can this be so many peoples' entire worlds - you can't even touch it or smell it or taste it or talk to it. Oh, you mean like the dot com boom? Yeah, remember that?

I can't put my finger on it really. It's this way that no one has to memorize poems anymore and how I can remember the phone number of my best friend Johnathan Lawson in 1st grade but I can't remember my boyfriend's without looking at my cell phone. I remember when I wasn't going to give in to owning a CD burner because I'd still make mix tapes and now I just make iTunes playlists. I'm making one right now. And I love it! I love having so much of the music I love so easily accessible and able to be manipulated into endless mixes at my merest whim with very little effort involved. I totally buy into it and find it annoying at the same time. It's like how I love my iPod but I don't want to upgrade every year and buy the Shuffle and the iPhone and whatever new thing comes out after I've already bought the old version of it two weeks prior. I don't think it's bad that there are people who love these things or want to be called "bloggers" or "vloggers" but it sometimes feels like people are more interested in being able to have a title or a tag as opposed to actually developing a personality. That sentence could just as easily be about "Bears."

I am going on vacation for a week tomorrow and my goal is to not go online the whole time. We'll have Ryan's laptop to look up locations for fun stuff and to get driving directions. I don't want to check my email or look at LJ or even upload photos to Flickr. Hell, maybe I'll bring some stationery with me and write some letters.

Enjoy this song, it's one of my favorites right now and it's completely suited to this olde post:
"Tonight You Belong To Me" - Patience & Prudence.