The Peculiarities of Facebook

With all of the Internet technology developing recently, keeping people linked to their pasts is becoming easier and easier. I am sure that everyone here knows about My Space and most of you know about Facebook. If you don't then I will sum it up. Basically it is a way for people who go to school to network with everyone at their school. Along with that you can collect other friends profiles at other schools. Some you know, some you don't. Some people that you would never really speak to in life, others that you talk to all the time.

Being a ballet dancer means that the majority of people I am in contact with all the time are not enrolled in school. However thanks to the ABT/LIU program that was started this past year I am able to not only collect college credit but join Facebook as well! Hooray! (Please note slight sarcasm). What it is slowly starting to act as is a reminder of how disconnected I am from the people I went to school with as a child. I look through their profiles and see pictures of them attending college or spending time in Montana for the summer and am amazed at how many of them still keep in touch with one another. I haven't seen any of these people in person or even had the desire to see most of them since I left my 8th Grade Graduation. Yet there they are with their strings of inside jokes and pictures at college parties. It is a strange reminder of how different the life of a professional ballet dancer is. Not better or worse just different. Its also strange having the capability to be a voyeur into the lives of people who I would still be around had I never left home. Had my life gone in any "normal" way I would be in this very pictures I speak of.

Growing up I always had a small group of friends and was mainly just friendly with the rest of the people I was involved with. I had a group of guys that I hung out with (feigning an interest in football but never hunting....which is where I drew the line of fake hobbies) and they all still are apparently bumming around together.

For me middle school was a jumping off point and all of my substantial relationships developed either before with childhood friends or after at high school and beyond. Did I just never take Grade and Middle School seriously? Or was it that although accepted I never felt like I fit in? Even at that age did I just realize that I wasn't really planning on sticking around too much longer and therefore didn't bother? Since I was a kid I have always said I was going to end up in New York however I never dreamed I would have been half as fortunate as I have been. Dreams don't always become reality. Ah the cliches are coming out on Thursday night!

I often wonder if you put the group of guys I hung out with and I in a room together now whether or not we would really have anything to talk about. One thing I noticed is that the majority of them seem to have pictures on Facebook of hunting. Guns never really went well with what I was wearing. Also the fact that they have never really had any interest in the arts would be a major tipping point as it always has been.

Maybe one day that reunion will actually come. Until then....I'll just rant.