My on-line inclinations have gone ahead and built an alternate reality that I wish I lived. Talk about digital enhancement. I am forced to admit reality does not always reflect the “image crafting” afoot online.
Here is a pie chart of my daily life after being laid off a month ago. As you can see I have not been to pie chart school…but you get the drift.
Clearly something had to be done. About a year ago I had joined Ottawa’s “Meet Up” social network site after taking a shine to Samba drumming. Despite the name it is not a dating site (that would be spelled Meat Up…Boom Boom). It is a social calendar putting you in touch with groups that gather in the flesh to do cool things…or just things… there are a lot of self-improvement workshops.
The site keeps track of your calendar and sends out reminders of all the dates you have expressed an interest in.
Mostly this just reminds me on a weekly basis that I am not in fact drumming like I claimed I wanted to. But I didn’t stop there. I joined a whole bunch of groups I never ever go to including Ottawa Social, Arts and Culture Junkies and Ottawa British Meet Up Group.
I religiously attend absolutely none of those.
The weekly e-mail I get telling me about all the fab things I am not doing has started to irk me. But something stops me from deleting it, I just watch the digital world scroll by … sigh ruefully (yes … absolutely FULL of rue) and then drive kids to all the activities they do before returning to the sofa to watch Arrested Development on Netflixs.
After a month of this I decided to throw caution, or whatever it is that forms that rubber wall that stops me from taking part, to the wind and do all the things I say I want to do in one week.
So here goes. A brand new activity every day next week including Laughing Yoga, a clothes swap, meeting for drinks to practice other languages etc. I will be going on CBC Ottawa’s In Town And Out on Saturday morning to chat about the week with Giacomo Panico.
The stretch of sociability starts with nudie Life Drawing and not sitting at home asleep like these cats:
oonawoods 
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