On Many Subjects

It occurred to me that most of the people I associate with on a day to day basis are somewhere else. What I mean is, they live in a city that is far, far away.

Most of you know I work as a Virtual Assistant, which is a fancy word for secretary, but what makes it fancy is that I don't have to be sitting in your office to work for you. I can sit in my own office and do my nails while on a conference call with six people and edit some idiot's web page because he can't spell worth a hoot and the spell checker button doesn't work on his computer. All at the same time. And normally, I will be making a sandwich, reading and/or creating a blog entry and listening to the neighbor across the courtyard yelling at her (spouse, brother, boyfriend or casuaul acquaintence... I don't know the relationship) to get the f**k out of the f*****g apartment and get hisself (her word, not mine) a f*****g job. The ultimate in multitasking. The really cool part is most of this can be done while I am still in my pajamas. And I get paid to do it.

But, that isn't what I wanted to talk about so, I will start again.

Most of the people I know live somewhere other than where I live. In fact, a vast majority of them I have never met in person. One classic example is all of you grand Opera friends that are stretched across the globe and on every continent except for Antartica. So many places are represented.

And my family is stretched liberally across many state lines and county lines, so most of my interaction with them is via the telephone, computer, or snail mail. I choose the telephone most often to talk to the family.

Even my bf is in another state and we communicate mostly by the computer because when we get on the phone, something strange happens to the space-time continuum and we start talking and then all of a sudden it is several hours later and we wonder where the hell has the time gone and what did we talk about that was so important that it took several hours to discuss? But that is okay. He satisfies my mojo and when we finally physically get together, then... well it is like Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July all happening at the same time. Pretty cool stuff.

My bf proposed an idea that this may be the wave of the future, that people with have a circle of thousands of friends, most of whom we will never meet in person, ever. The old traditions are slowly eroding away. I think (strongly) this is the way to create true globalization. Differences and philosophies will fall away and people will do what they always do when they get together in the name of friendship and companionship. I feel like I am on the cutting edge of the future and it is really exciting.

Proximity is never a problem in my new global society. It is a global mindset and although I live by mself, I am never alone and likely I have more interaction with people than someone who hasn't expanded their thinking across the entire planet.

The first order of business is discussing the weather in our particular area of the world, when I start talking on the phone or in IM with someone who lives somewhere else and acutal business isn't involved. (I often wonder what poeple would talk about if there was no weather.) In a conference call on Friday, I spoke with ladies who are from New York, Kentucky, Colorado, Utah, Alabama, India and Australia. That is not an unusual conference call for me. We talk about things just like we are in the same room... kids, pets, spouses, work, the weather.

I feel like an emissary for globalization because political boundries and ideologies, religious differences and social strata do not enter into my daily routine even though my day may start out like a bad joke... a catholic, a Republican, a Hindu, a single mom, a sheep farmer and a Harvard graduate walk into a bar...