I’ve been feeling a bit disconnected lately. Ok, maybe just today. I had a great weekend but some pieces of it fell short of what I had hoped. Some pieces exceeded my expectations! Honestly, I just want to connect with real people lately over real things.

Is anyone really out there? I mean, really? It seems that we’re all talking to the walls. I’m having a mental breakdown on the internet lately. I’ve always been firmly in the camp of ‘the internet brings people together,’ but lately…sheesh…people!

The internet does connect people. Most of the people I know right now I met online through first Yahoo groups and then Facebook. I’ve used it as a beacon to find like minded or at least like scheduled people to get together with.

My first use of the internet to meet people was joining Yahoo groups to find other local mom’s and meet up for park days. “Playgroups” were awesome back then. It made going to the park so much more fun because you knew there would be other mom’s to talk to and the kids would have friends to play with. We met every week, rain or shine. We’d move it indoors if it were too cold or wet outside. And eventually we moved it to each other’s homes. We all bonded over the kids and their crazy antics. I still know those people thanks to Facebook.

Yahoo groups also introduced me to my first homeschool park day. I met those families every week, too. We’d meet at the same park at the same time, kids in tow, with picnic lunches and lawn chairs. We had the most fun there. Again, I still know some of those families. I’ve recently learned that homeschoolers don’t really do this anymore and it just breaks my heart.

My sons have made friends of their own on social media. And, yes, they are real people with real lives and some of them we have met in person now.

It’s been overall a pretty positive experience. But lately…

It’s as if people are only there to argue. Most people don’t really read a post. Several times now I’ve asked for specific answers to questions from a personal point of view and all I get is someone “googling it for me” or telling me why I should do something else. If I post that I’m looking for a friend, lovers raise their hands. If I say, “Does anyone read books?” I get “Movies are better!”

You know what I’d like right now? I’d regular park day to hang out at, a weekly thing that we all bring lunch to and sit and talk to each other. I’d like a monthly book club where everyone reads something and shares it over coffee and we all freely associate what we’re reading with what everyone else is reading, or just spend time laughing about not having time to finish any book. I’d like to have people over every Saturday afternoon for a potluck.

Host those things! That’s what you’re thinking. I have. I have done most of them fairly regularly over the years, but people don’t come anymore. They all say they will. They all say they’d love to. But when the day comes they flake out and I’m stuck sitting there alone, more depressed than before I started. I just don’t have the emotional fortitude to sit at a booth at IHOP waiting for all those people that said they’d be there, only to get a message an hour later that they aren’t going to make it after all. It’s just a lot of effort and I’m tired.

I’m not sure what to do about it. I’m not sure if there is anything to do about it.