Is it Real, or is it Virtual?

Does this ever happen to you?……….

I had just finished an interesting discussion with a few of my friends who are not geeks, or very “in the know” when it comes to being active on the Internet, let alone understand what Social Media or Social Networking is, when I noticed that they were just staring at me, with a blank gaze, sort of like they had drifted off in a day dream.  I was trying to share with them the accomplishment I had felt from working through the tasks of getting my own domain, and putting together the beginnings of my own personal blog.  I was quite excited to share with them what I had done to get all this up on the Internet, and ready to jump into the many Social Networking activities that have become a huge part of my day.  

Imagine, if you will, that they must have felt I was speaking a foreign language, totally oblivious to their dilemma of not knowing what I was so excited about.  Well, they did ask me “what have you been up to?”, as we had not seen each other in a long time.  So, after they talked about work and the PTA, husbands and pets, and the latest recipe they had experimented with, (yawn), they wanted to hear something interesting about me.  I started with the regular stuff… family news and anecdotes of my latest picture taking adventure, how the pups were doing, and how it’s just hard times all over, but we would persist in fighting the good fight … Blah, blah, blah.  

And then I started telling them about my activities in my “2nd home” in the virtual world of Second Life™, where I do many more exciting things, and spend over half my waking hours each day pursuing them, on my computer.  I was well into telling them about Plurking and Tweeting to friends I have made all over the real world, even though I had never met most of them in a face-to-face meeting.  I even told them of getting poked on Facebook and sharing pictures on Flickr!, and watching TV programs on Hulu.com.  

But it wasn’t until I was sharing with them about getting my Wordpress blog up on my domain, and was happy to be posting my web address so anyone could come read these musings, that I realized I had lost them to that “day-dreamer’s gaze”.  Oh, they were very polite, and tried to appear interested, and that they were following every word I said, but they really didn’t do a great job in disguising their confusion on the subjects I was talking about.  I am very used to seeing that “gaze”, as I often am doing things that are different, or need a bit of explanation as to the “hows & whys” of any given adventure I might be involved in.  

I’m not sure how this had gotten past me, but I had to do something to reel them back to a common ground.  I figured it would be easier to end our lil chat if I was the one left in a daze, especially since it would be a self-imposed one.  So, I took a chance, and asked them if they had any idea how I should cook an “old-fashioned pot roast”, with all the trimmings like our moms used to make.  That snapped them right back into the conversation, and they each gave me their best ideas to cooking a pot roast that would be tasty AND everyone’s favorite meal ever!

Well, that was a good dodge to assure they would not be leaving this chance meeting shaking their heads at me, and hoping that I really had not lost my mind.  I was still just a tad eccentric, but very adventurous in their eyes, and I do believe they may even be envious of me, just a wee bit, because of it.

Now I just have to figure out how I can share this “Virtual reality” with them, so they understand just how “Real” it is to me.

Hmmmmm……