Never Alone

One of the challenges of retiring from an active business life is thought to be the alienation and isolation of being at home all the time as opposed to the communal living and camaraderie of the office. Baloney. My law office was usually like a tomb on a busy shopping day. I could wander around the entire office and not find one attorney to talk to. Fast forward to almost retirement. Here I sit all by myself with my six cozy computers. I am never more than a few minutes or seconds away from interesting and challenging conversation. Albeit most of the conversation is written, but nevertheless, it is social and I do not feel either alienated or isolated.

To add to the sense of belonging and community, my immediate family is also almost always online, so although we live in different parts of the country, we are never very far apart through Facebook, blogs, Skype, Google Talk, Email and, of course, the telephone.

But reality of the situation is that I am really too awfully busy to think about isolation. In fact, I probably would appreciate a little isolation now and again, if I could find time to take a break. If I get tired of writing, I can always go out and take photos.

Jill Ball, of Geniaus fame, wrote about "Alone in the Wilderness." Hmm. I guess if I were really in a wilderness instead of one of the largest cities in the U.S., I might get far enough out to lose cellphone service and maybe I would feel alone. Most of the time when I start to feel alone, I go to sleep. Sitting up, laying down, even standing, if I stop thinking, I sleep.

I do have to agree with Jill that "most other genealogists do not share my enthusiasm for blogging or social media; some of them do not even care about or want to know what blogs and social media are." And that is just genealogists. That doesn't even begin to count the anti-genealogists and genealogical agnostics out there in the world. Then again, I you really want to feel alone, try going to a genealogy conference as a male attendee. (Just kidding).

Jill was talking about the geographic extent of her genealogy mates. For my part, Genealogy's Star ranks 2,379 in New Zealand. According to Alexa, that's 33% of my traffic. Thanks to you Kiwis out there for reading my blog.  On the other hand, Google Analytics shows that I have a following in the UK, Canada, Portugal, Poland and Switzerland. Thanks to all you folks also.