What is it with the overwhelming desire of people to unburden themselves on mobile 'phone and internet?
What is it that turns us into public dialling harpies and burgeoning Joe & Jill Bloggs?
At first, I was sceptical (still am), I tend to be an intensively private person working on a 'need to know' basis. Whilst others being asked the simple question' how are you?' respond with an organ recital, I hear this as a trick question and a stock 'good' suffices.

I text therefore I am..

Now the facility of communication is all-pervasive. We carry our mobiles around in our grubby little mitts, or have to rifle through capacious handbags to find the perpetrator of some extremely annoying  and cliched ringing tone. We are obsessed with keeping all and sundry appraised of where we are, what we are doing and who we are doing it with. We lose all inhibitions, conducting business and pleasure through a tannoy system to often unknown, uninterested and unrelated eavesdroppers.

Yet, are they all uninterested?. I love to overhear other people's conversations, after all they are now in the public domain. On a train from Edinburgh to London, I lived through a spectacular saga of an on/off relationship that would have been worthy of a prime spot on the Jeremy Kyle Show. And not only me, but the whole carriage heard, whether they wanted to or not. I expect my fellow travellers were all veterans of Psychology 101 like me and were glad of the impromptu case study.

Shortly after Edinburgh, it was all sweetness and light. It reminded me of 'The Darling Letters'; promises of undying love and some steamy examples of how this may be shown, was completely off the cards by the time we reached the borders. Here's one couple who won't be eloping to Gretna I thought as we sped past the famous forge. By Carlisle, the tears and crushing desolation of the breakup had us all reaching for our tissues. What kind of person was that on the other end of the 'phone signal? What sort of cruel and heartless individual could so ungraciously dump someone who a couple of hours earlier had sworn undying love. We soon learned exactly who, as insults and name calling, decibels and derogatory names flew in middle England. Oh No! Should I offer tea and sympathy, a stiff drink, a packet of Kleenex? Just as I was debating this, I was interrupted from my good samaritan musings - saved by the bell! By Watford, it was all on again, they couldn't live without each other and by then, the whole carriage and I wondered if we could either!

I blog therefore I am...

We seem the same in print. We are twenty first century versions of Hilaire Belloc,
When I am dead
I hope it is said
My sins were scarlet
But my blogs were read.
As with overhearing portable public conversations, I love to live vicariously through other people's blogs. There are many incredible writers and we have some of them on The Riviera Woman website. I have laughed till I cried, I have cried 'til I cried some more and shared strangers pleasure and pain. For someone who is in equal parts nosy and reticent, blogs offer me free education and entertainment, whilst not having to deal with the horror of audience participation. 

People blog for different reasons, some to inform, some to entertain and some as a form of catharsis. The desire to put pen to paper and now screen; our thoughts, aspirations, hopes and fears help us to make sense of a baffling and fast moving world. By sharing our experiences, we validate ourselves.
Of course, there is the usual flood of opinionated self-aggrandisers. Blogs also offer a platform to write what we dare not voice and there is no consequence except a drop in readership and a few frantic irate responses.

My question is, with this avalanche of communication technology are we really any closer to connecting with people? Sitting next to someone to share news, to smile at their joy, to weep with their sorrow is becoming a lost art. There is a place and reason to say LoL, Lots of Love to someone and seal it with a kiss, then we won't be mistaken for the terse stage direction of LoL Laugh out Loud and think our feelings are being ridiculed.

Meanwhile, don't let the bloggers get you down!