Geez....it feels like forever since I last posted a blog. According to blogger, it's been about 19 days--still feels like more than that. I read up on some of the blogs I follow (you should check them out too) and recall how one of them said that things here are so busy and are the 'new' is wearing off. She's right, so many things here are becoming normal and it while the little things are important--I may forget to mention them here.
Which jumps me to thoughts I've been having; they are more like curious musings actually. I recognize that perhaps I'm spoiled here with readily available internet both at my local community center and in my home. I can't speak for other PCVs around the world, but I'm fairly sure there are many of them that do not have consistent access to the internet--some perhaps not even computers. Moreover, I think back 10 or 20 years or so when computers and the internet were not the great linkage holding so many of us together.
While I can only speak for myself, I'm sure there are many other PCVs out there spending hours in front of the computer. Sure some of it is blogging and bouncing around social networkings sites, checking emails, and digging up the latest research to help prepare us for the next day's work. On one hand, I'm grateful for the internet and the time I spend on my computer. Without it, I probably would have had a much harder time learning about remedial reading coaching skills, drum lessons, various sporting rules & activities, easy-to-use business templates, and a host of other useful ventures. Yet, I wonder what is the cost of spending so much time on the computer. One principal of business economics is that of opportunity cost--everything we do is made from a choice. By pursuing one option we give up another, even if we are unaware of what that option might have been.
Sometimes I wonder if I would be spending more nights on 'the block' or in the domino sheds at the local shops or perhaps wandering down the the bayside. Sure, I do a great many things in my community--everyone in my village will attest to that. Yet as I wander down the road coming home from meetings and lessons, I still feel the outsider even though so many have done so much to bring me into the fold. I'm curious to know how I'd feel or what I'd do if I was completely disconnected from the computer. Of course, the quasi-technophile I am would experience a withdrawl period. However, Would I be forging closer bonds and ties with individuals in my community? Would I be developing those relationships and discovering things (good or bad) about my community, the place, people, and their needs that go by unspoken as I sit in my home typing away on this very blog.
Perhaps still would have gone home and curled up with a good book instead of a video display. Everything has a cost--what would I be doing if not this? I'll probably never know as long as I have my electronic umbilical cord. Often my thoughts stray to wonder if their is an entire cultural shift in the volunteer experience from the internet's communication revolution. Now PCVs share their photos, thoughts, stories, and very lives with world at large. People can see and hear about what we are doing at the very touch of a button. This also provides us with a tool to keep in a 'close' proximity. Or course, that makes for a fantastic people-based network for post-volunteer opportunities. Yet the mind still wanders--are PCVs with consistent internet services of today having different experiences as a volunteer than those who serve in areas without it or with volunteers who served before the internet and computers were household names?
Not that this really matters to my service here, just tangent my mind seems to drift on from time to time.
Stay safe and well,
ciao tutti
~your local wannabe jedi
~Shawn
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