Posts Tagged ‘virtual communities’
Enormous Void
Since I no longer work for a living, yesterday’s New Year’s Day holiday was no different than a typical Wednesday for me. Hoping to pay some respect to the festive occasion, I rustled up a college football game on television to entertain me in fine holiday fashion. That is when I unexpectedly witnessed a brief statement of news from a sports announcer.
Their “BREAKING NEWS” moment revealed to me there had been a terrorist attack in New Orleans, and it was causing a 24-hour delay in the playoff game scheduled to happen in the stadium there. Not the most joyful start for a new year.
The (peaceful) void in our home due to Asher’s week with a trainer has been filled after Cyndie and I picked him up on Tuesday. The rabbits and lackadaisical pigeons better take note that the sheriff’s back in town. I’m sure we will have plenty of opportunities to practice the “Leave IT!” command in the days ahead.
There was also a void in the latest jigsaw puzzle I assembled that had me overthinking many of my decisions about which piece went where.
After the initial build, there comes some sectional rearranging, which then permits the opening of a second bag of pieces to complete a surprise middle. Good fun in a hand-me-over gift from my sister, Judy. My hat’s off to the artist who created the multitude of entertaining details and strategically repeated portions that allow the image to be manipulated like the last page of a MAD magazine.
Ultimately, however, the most enormous void I am experiencing is the result of a member of my virtual community, Brainstorms MetaNetwork, having ended his life between Christmas and New Year’s. That was such shockingly unexpected information to read on a typical pass through new posts Tuesday morning.
I never met him in real life, but we’ve been hanging out in the same discussion spaces online for more than a couple of decades. It definitely strikes a nerve knowing he dealt with depression and some stressful life situations. He has left a lot of folks with challenges of grief, and it has currently tarnished the start of the new year for us.
I keep seeing that hole in the puzzle I built and thinking that is what our virtual community looks like this week.
I’m sure the families and friends of victims of the incident in New Orleans early yesterday morning are feeling even larger holes in their lives today.
It feels like there isn’t enough love to fill the void, but what better response could I give?
Join me, because we can conjure love from out of nowhere by simply thinking it into existence and then feeling it in our hearts. On top of that, when we are focused on love, and manifesting it into being, there is a simultaneous absence of hate occurring. Less hate, more love. Send it! Feed the world what it truly needs.
There is a tremendous void deserving of our attention, and it is within the reach of all of our hearts.
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Just Love
Certainly, there could be worse things to keep coming back to, but my mind has begun to develop a healthy habit of naturally settling on thoughts about sending and receiving LOVE amid the swirl of good and bad circumstances that wash over us with unrelenting regularity.
We learned last night of an unexpected death among our extended family, all too close to the time of Cyndie’s dad’s passing that has everyone already raw with grief. The increasing infection rate of the coronavirus pandemic is pressing firmly against the frustrations of being locked down for months and disrupting dreams of resuming some previous activity.
Plans for the fall are far from settled as to whether schools will be able to open safely and entertainment venues will figure out a way to host events.
It is almost becoming a physically painful thing to not be able to hug people, on top of the ever-awkward absence of a genuine handshake.
Still, we are showered with ongoing blessings that become more precious with each pause for acknowledgment. The gestures of condolence that have arrived in the last two weeks have warmed our hearts.
Last Sunday, Cyndie and I worked on preparing the brooder for the anticipated arrival of 12 new day-old chicks this month. As hard as the loss of birds is on my tender wife, she couldn’t stop herself from ordering more. New life is coming to Wintervale again!
Summer is in full swing in all its glory around our land, regardless of the recent loss of some big trees. We’re preparing to host travelers we’ve not met before from my virtual community, Brainstorms, in the days ahead. We offered a free parking spot for their small RV on their trek home that is taking them right past our neighborhood on the interstate.
I keep imagining how pleasant it would be if the news media took several days off from mentioning anything a certain person says or does and simply focused on news that matters without any distractions or fabricated drama. I do struggle to muster enough love to offset the disturbance that rolls out of the nation’s capital like the irritation of a lingering dead skunk smell.
The high heat and excessively oppressive tropical dewpoint temperatures are hanging around lately even longer than skunk odors, which is definitely exacerbating the angst of those who lack artificial cooling in their homes.
There is good and bad roiling around in a weird mix. What can we do to cope effectively but love?
Just love.
It sure can’t hurt to try.
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— special love goes out to Carlos today for his sorrow and loss —
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Weak Link
There are many days when the Wintervale connection to the world via the internet is annoyingly flakey. The problem is mysterious and invisible, frequently interrupting progress in the middle…
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Hi, I’m back. That’s the way this works. After a seemingly interminable pause, activity resumes as if nothing is amiss. You wouldn’t notice a thing, unless you were attempting to visit with others via Zoom.
“Your internet connection is unstable.”
As soon as that message appears, even as I rush to write a chat message to everyone to explain that I could hear them all even though my image may have frozen to them, my fate is doomed to closing and then immediately reconnecting, minus all the text I had just entered in the chat window.
It’s life in the country. For all the advantages we enjoy living out among farm fields and forests, it comes at the expense of having a reliable internet connection. The industry can’t balance the economics of running fiberoptic cable to handfuls of houses scattered across many wide miles.
We don’t stream. We rent DVDs through the mail.
If we want to accomplish something without interruption, it takes a lucky combination of atmospheric conditions and an absence of too much competition for the limited bandwidth. Oh, and we can’t have already exceeded our cap of monthly allotted usage.
In all of the Zoom meetings I have participated in over the last month, I was the weakest link.
It’s too bad because I love the possibility of connecting with my multiple remote communities, but I love living where we do even more.
Cyndie pointed out that our new openings around the two big oak trees beside the driveway allow for excellent viewing of the rising moon.
Since our internet browsers weren’t having much success loading pages, we were more available to get out and enjoy the lunar view.
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Relative Something 