a balance

I turned on the computer late last night to write a post that balanced out the garden one from the previous Friday. I'd taken photographs of nettles and bindweed rampaging amongst the flower beds and the beans, and of piles of rubbish next to the shed, and of the grass that is growing through into next doors garden and probably driving them mad.
but I didn't quite get the photos uploaded, or the post written.

you see every time I turn on the computer I find more and more "social networks" to distract me.

first of course is google reader, where I catch up with all your news, then this week I joined twitter - and I can honestly say hand on heart, "I don't understand it...."

and then there is pinterest. miles and miles of inspiring things to look at, to like and repin and comment on, and giggle at the comments of others, coffee lady and Lynn have a hilarious thing going on about bicycles and muffins....
I do have a problem with pinterest though, much as I love it, oh and boy do I love it, but I get this sense of overwhelming when I spend too much time on it. so much to create, so many beautiful things I'd love to have, so many kitchens to get green with envy over, endless gorgeous hairstyles I know my hair won't create, places to go, endless things to make and eat and .........

lastly there's facebook. it's a funny thing facebook, I have friends who I see every week, friends who live across the road, relatives I've not seen for years as they live in foreign lands, friends from years gone by, blog friends, and friends of friends. whenever I log on I catch up with little snippets of news from far and wide - news of my sisters engagement (bet not everyone finds out this way....) and of new blog posts to check out, and photos of parties and holidays and all manner of things. every once in a while I'm even on at the same time as a friend and then you can "chat" as I did this week with Lynn, almost a real time conversation, the occasional "hurry up" thought, as facebook informs you that ..... is typing. so much to say. so much news to catch up on.

last night it was different though. I read one update that stopped me in my tracks. someone wrote that her husband had died suddenly only a short time after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. he was just starting his chemotherapy treatment. and was only 2 years older than me. I suddenly didn't know what to think, we didn't know him well, he was the brother in law of one of my oldest friends, but we'd seen him last summer and no one could fail to like him. I felt an urge to shut off from everything, enough, no more information, I don't want to read posts like this, I'd rather not know, and I decided to just walk away from it all, no more, I shall become a hermit, a technophobe, delete all my accounts.

but you can't hide, the information is still out there, and it doesn't go away just because you ignore it. so I realised that this is the balance, the negative that comes with the positive, the north and the south, I can't just have the pretty pictures and show off my garden, and admire cupcakes, and dream about quilts and wooden worktops. there is a real world out there too, and I can't pretend it doesn't exist. life isn't perfect, and I can't hide from that, and the support and inspiration and friendship that I get from being here is the balance I need, but it requires a certain amount of honesty, I should have photographed my nettles last week, instead of pretending that everything was perfect, and but I'm not going to show you them now - this post is long enough already.