Parallels, or lack thereof

Social networking means that you never lose track of anyone.

I know because this is the field I work in now. I spend the majority of my time on the page I work for, and then, in my free time, I click over to Facebook. I receive updates from people from all over the world, people who make me wonder 'Who the hell is that guy?' until I remember sitting across from him in 7th grade math class. It's strange, and many people bemoan this collection of fake friends we're all collecting.

I'm in favor of it. It's my own personal sociology news scanner. I am watching my old classmates and acquaintances grow into adulthood. And of course, they're watching me, too.

What is odd for me is that with each passing year, my life becomes further and further off kilter from my social news blotter. I haven't fully unpacked my suitcases since the end of 2006. My new career involves communal living, global travel, uncomfortable mattresses, and strangers that come to live with me as friends nearly constantly.

I love it.

But my Facebook news has turned into the equivalent of the "Births and Brides" section in a local newspaper. Now, I know what you're waiting for: here's where the travel snob goes off about the simple-mindedness of those who settle down, and congratulates herself for her sense of adventure and cultural nuance. Not so. The actual truth is far more complex.

Right before leaving for Chile, I was working at the wonderful Newtonville Books just outside Boston. One of my coworkers there was about my age, studying for her masters, and engaged. She had plans to open a children's book store someday, and was picking out her wedding invitations with a healthy sense of amusement. I was scrounging up my money, first for a job in Paris and then, within a week, for one in Chile. I lived out of a pile of clothing in my parents' house and considered a monthly public transit pass to be a considerable commitment. You would think that we would have hated each other, but we didn't. She knew someone 'like me,' she said, and would laugh in a head-shaking way about my wanderlust as I climbed the ladder once again to rearrange the travel books. And me -- well, that's the complicated part.

Her fiance would come to pick her up from work with takeout food and silly anecdotes. He'd prank call her during the day, pretending to be looking for some obscure book, and end up all sweet. They were house hunting. They were secure. They had a planned course. I respected it, often so much that I found it painful to be around. It was something I could have pursued, but at the same time, couldn't.

The path I've chosen, meanwhile, is like crossing a river while hiking. You jump from stone to stone, but you can only eyeball the next one. You can't predict how it will actually hold up under your pressure. Not blind leaps, but leaps of faith. Sometimes you find yourself on the tip of a deeply submerged, immovable boulder. Sometimes you find yourself teetering precariously on an unpredictable but at least temporarily dry surface. Sometimes you hit and immediately find yourself thrown sideways into the water.

Sounds exotic and exciting to some. Sounds idiotic to others. To me, there's no other way because this is how I live. But that doesn't mean I don't feel envy.

Some days, I want that prank call from the boyfriend who's known me forever and knows how to tease without making me angry. I want the silly Facebook pictures of the ring and the sunset and the surprise champagne. I want the ugly bridesmaid dresses, the baby nieces and nephews, the back porches, the season ball game tickets, the inside jokes.

Sometimes, I want security.

It is a trade off. Many of my friends sigh and tell me how they'd love to do the things I do, if only it were possible. It is possible, and I tell them so --but I've come to believe that the real reason they don't is not lack of ability, time, or resources. It's that they're able to get a little taste of my lifestyle from time to time, even if I wouldn't consider it as such. A person can have a stable, established life and take 2 weeks or a month to travel and come home feeling road-weary and global. And so both goals are satisfied.

The problem is that when your primary need is curiosity and travel, there's no equivalent voyage into the world of the rooted. I can't get a fiance and an apartment on a two week loan. As things in my family life have changed recently, I can't even name a place that would be a home to visit. There is no anchor, and it can't be summoned up for the fulfillment of a brief need.

So I read the daily engagement announcements on Facebook with a mixed heart. Most of me knows I would lose my mind if I were to trade shoes. The other part knows the same but wishes I could lose that trait. In the end, I'm happy with who I am and the life that I'm living. I know that if I could have held this picture up to myself at ten years younger, I would have died of joy and awe. I treasure this: the fact that my life has turned out more ME than I ever imagined it could have been. Even a year ago, my life today would have been unimaginable. I write this from my living room in Costa Rica, the place where I'll be working for the next 2.5 months. Every morning at 7am a troupe of howler monkeys passes through my backyard. I swim in the ocean nearly every day, as it's about 500 meters from my house, and I'm even learning to surf. I'm practicing my Spanish again. Geckos are as common on my bedroom walls as flies would be in other places (and would be here, if the geckos weren't eating them). I now know what a "tree chicken" is, and I've rode on a tiny motorbike through torrential tropical downpour.

Life is good. But the internet provides this incredible one-way mirror onto the lives of others. At the end of the day, though, I have to know that while I'm sitting here feeling pangs over someone else's settled and orderly life, someone else is envying my nomadicism. The information age, indeed.