Virtually Living

As I write this, I have just left off in the middle of my fourth game of war mahjong. I felt uncomfortable playing, because I know that I was only playing out of avoidance. I have been avoiding taking a shower, eating something healthy, playing with my dogs, and facing the bleakest of life situations; long-term unemployment, depression, and an overall feeling of hopelessness. Plenty of reasons to lose myself in war mahjong, except today, I can’t do this with any level of comfort, and so I begin this writing.
I’m sure that I am not alone. When I log onto Facebook, or Pogo games, or e-mail, it seems that almost everyone I know is online, or has been online, leaving their digital footprints for everyone to follow. I’m not the only one trying to lose myself for short or long periods of time. We are all in the same boat. Avoiding something, and staying online for a little bit longer in order to continue doing so.
It occurs to me that this virtual existence has become a problem, and too easy an avenue of escape. Nothing gets done, the days roll by, and as my game points accrue, my real life slowly continues to unravel. This has become a barely tolerable existence, as opposed to real-life, which right now seems entirely too intolerable to bear. Now, my days are muted, and blurred by consecutive games of crossword and mahjong, occasionally interrupted by checking e-mail, or the news on Yahoo. I’m lucky if I even know what day it is, or what month, or even what year. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I have over three-million points on Pogo. Progress is being made. I may stink, but nobody cares online. I may be unemployed, but I earn the same points as everyone else. My house may be messy, and my laundry piling up, but again, it’s far too easy to pretend otherwise, because everyone wears blinders in the virtual world.
Of course, I do learn something in my virtual world. I keep by brain sharp with puzzles, so that if the real world ever needs me again, I’ll be ready to step up, get up and go. This morning, I learned that radiated water can burn your feet through your shoes, and that Lindsay Lohan is dropping her last name, and just going by “Lindsay,” and also that Abercrombie & Fitch have a hand in stealing the youth of American girls by offering pre-teens padded bikinis, shame on them . . . And this is just today. I learn important things like this everyday.
Any oddity that crosses my mind can be “Googled” instantly, like the number of eggs a sea-turtle hatches, and what exactly does a sea turtle look like? I Google my name to see what comes up, and I Google the names of my family and friends. That kills a good fifteen minutes to a half-hour. There is no limit to how many times I can kill fifteen minutes to a half-hour with Google.
There is a great deal of money being made online. Sometimes I look at websites that offer any item the mind can fathom, and I wonder if I am “missing the boat.” Should I be a web entrepreneur? And what would I sell? I have a bamboo garden in my backyard, growing wild. Could I sell stalks of bamboo for cold, hard cash? The problem is, that so many companies, and websites in the virtual world I hang out in, don’t tell the truth about anything. They lie all the time, and so they can’t ever be trusted. This is fine with me, as long as I know they are lying. Then, I begin to wonder how all that internet cash I'll be reeling in will affect my unemployment check. Uh-oh. The real world sometimes creeps into the virtual world, and my body tenses, my stomach churns, and that’s a good sign that Internet Entrepreneurship is not for me. Onto the next puzzle. Phew, that was close!