June 28, 2009 – This weekend, I’ve been alone for the first time in a few months. I was alone for quite a bit, and it’s a familiar state for me in my life. Aloneness isn’t just about having people around. Sometimes it’s quite lonely around people. Since Maria joined my life, I’ve been fortunate to share my life with someone, and that is a constant joy. This weekend, she’s off visiting a good friend, and that is good for her and for me, too, although it brought back memories of being alone.
  Somewhere between Thomas Merton’s hermitage,my farm and the world is a balance. Our world  is lonely, I think. We are disconnected from one another, and the institutions of family, economics, politics, religion, technology don’t serve sometimes to make us feel safe or connected.
 I feel a lot of pressure – some of it good – to hook into the information swarming around us, but I see that much of it is not only useless, but destructive, and it can overwhelm us with pressure.
  Do I need to be programs that allow every person I’ve ever known to get back in touch with me? Is that something I want, or feel a compulsion to do? I make choices. I have a Blackberry, and I get e-mail wherever I am. Otherwise I can’t keep up with it, and editors and agents need to reach me.
 I don’t think I could handle being on Facebook myself – I can’t keep up with e-mail. But as a writer in the marketplace, and a new children’s book writer, I want to use this technology to connect with readers and sell my books, without which I can’t live on this farm. So the blog has become an important personal and professional tool. I see that my daughter and her friends are never really alone – between Facebook, My Space, texting, e-mail and cell phones, they are constantly in touch with one another, and receiving “news” every second. I watch the news selectively. It has become a toxin, in the same way I am learning to be wary of obsessively negative people.
  Being alone is essential to getting to know yourself. So is being out of touch. In our world, that is becoming impossible. I am not a Luddite. I embrace change and see the benefits of new information technologies. The blogosphere is close to what Jefferson had in mind when he imagined an interactive, individualistic media. The horror shows on cable are not news, mostly just hysteria and confusion.
 But it’s okay to be alone, once in awhile. And out of touch. I am loving the biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an amazing book. He often wrote that you can love someone for a very long time, but intense love is, by its nature, sporadic.
  I think the same thing is true of loneliness. It comes and goes. And it is different from being alone.