So, if you’re reading this blog entry, you’re most likely someone who knows me via my ‘online personality’.  You’re someone who probably listened to the podcast or followed me on twitter or possibly ran across my Mustardseed video podcast.  If that’s the case, you have, for sure, noticed something that all three of those links have in common.  They’ve all recently “gone out of business”.  I’ve disconnected much of my online life in favor of pursuing other connections and, as I’ve recently said, “I don’t miss it one bit!”

Did you notice that I assumed that most people reading this entry were not people I know in real life?  Sure, there’s some exceptions (“Hi Mom!”) but most people who know me don’t need to read my blog because, well, they know me.  They see me at least once a week.  They run into me at Starbucks.  They stop in for coffee or we work on projects together.  In my new, more analog, life, connections aren’t made or fostered online…they’re carried out around a kitchen counter.  Literally.

I think our society expects us to have too many friends…too many connections. We’re encouraged to put quantity over quality.  We’re expected to stay in touch with people who move thousands of miles away.  We’re expected to run our kids from one friends house to the next.  We have the burden of popularity, the need to be loved by many, the drive to make more connections with our limited time an attention.  I’m done with that.  I will have few friends.  I will make few connections. I will spend most of the time with my family (both immediate and extended).  I will make those relationships deeper and willfully let quantity fall by the wayside.

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with you, oh dear blog reader.  I look at all the amazing connections I’ve made through my online life.  People I’ve tweeted with, blogged alongside, and facebooked.  People I then met in ‘real life’ at conferences, meetups, and trainings.  You are awesome and I wish I could be your friend.  However, I’m now fully convinced that relationships can’t be built online, only introductions or surface acquaintanceships.  I need some more serious weight on that corrupted word:  Friend.

How can you be my friend if I never see you to give you a man-hug (ya know, with the manly pat on the back so we don’t look too girly)?  How can I be your friend if I can’t give you a hand lifting something heavy or loan you a tool when you need to fix your car?  How can you be my friend if you don’t really know me through day to day conversation?  Sure, you can be an acquaintance.  But not a friend.  Not someone I can call in an emergency or someone I can lean on when I’m weak.  We have too many ‘friends’ in this Facebook-world and almost none in our actual living, breathing, human experiences.

So, (to take this question further to a problem it presents when the premise is accepted) with fewer, better, analog friends:  How do we stay in touch? How do we continue our friendship in a world built on Facebook and Twitter?

I ask this because I sit here in Starbucks alone. I yearn for some of those analog connections, yet to get them I have to fire up Twitter.  I have to text my peeps.  I have to use these ‘tools of distraction’ to make these connections happen.  We no longer live in a time when you can mail someone a letter (that would just be strange!) or even call them and say “let’s hang out”.  These methods no longer fit into lives crammed full of instant and unobtrusive communications.  We’re no longer able to just pop over to someone’s house or show up at their workplace because privacy and efficiency are more important than relationship.  We live in a world so separated and segregated that communicating directly is just plain rude since these connections are not run through our junk mail filter or archived in our Visual Voicemail box.

So, these two concepts sit side by side.  We need fewer and more analog friendships.  Yet, in this world we’re forced to use digital tools if we want those to happen. What’s the cure?  I suppose it has something to do with living closer together (this could mean city or small towns) and putting relationship over work…quality over quantity.

I strive for this change everyday.  The problem is…you can’t do it all by yourself.  So, who’s in?