Show me your email account and I tell you who you are...

Ok, I have to admit that this is some kind of a Last Minute-Moment of Zen, but I got my reasons: I didn't have anything like weekend the last few days (yes, you are allowed to pity me!). That's because I was part of a huge event called "72 hours". Over 100 000 young people in Germany attended it. The concept is very simple: On Thursday at 17.07 pm (sharp!) every group got an envelop with a social task. From that minute we had exactly 72 hours to fulfill this task and I can now tell you: That is not long! Me and 12 friends of mine didn't only have to renew the garden of an old people's home in our town, but we had to look after 35 kids at the age of 7 to 12 who wanted to "help" us. I guess it is clear which task was the more exhausting one and kept us up all night....
The reason why I tell you this is, that this experience led me to a Moment of Zen I had in bed this morning (after trying to make up for some sleep). Suddenly it occured to me, that I had been "offline" for about 4 days. That is quite a long time, I thought, but I really didn't miss Internet. I have to say, that I never was such an Internet person. I'm really a mess in researching online, I still prefer newspaper and TV for my everyday-information and surfing is not one of my favourite activities. But still the Internet got me somehow and now I have two email adresses, my family has its own homepage, I update my studiVZ account every day and, well, as you know: I'm a blogger now. So when I woke up this morning, the first thing I had in mind was: I have to go online. Not because I had missed the Internet, but because I expected loads of news. I expected hundreds of eMails and some new friend-invitations or group-infos or even both on studiVZ. Going online seemed to me as necessary, because in a few days there would be so many news that I could never recover them. And really: I had over 50 mails in my outlook, one new friend (who prefers to stay anonymous;-)), one new group and some new links on studiVZ and a comment on my blog (read it, Jana ^^).
What is interesting about these expectancies is that I know I would have been disappointed, if they wouldn't have been fulfilled. Although I could delete more than half of the emails without reading them, because their information was already old I was pleased to have them. Somehow the internet has become a source for self-assurance. The more mails you get, the more friends you have, the more links you have, the more comments you get, the surer you are, that you are recognized. We think, that our email account tells us how well-liked we are, although most of the emails we get are circulars and the people sendind them sometimes don't even know our faces. In the TV-series The Big Bang Theory produced by Chuck Lorre (the mastermind of Dharma&Greg and Two and a half men), one of the protagonists once said: "Well, you have to admit that we don't have that many friends", and his friend replied: "What do you mean? I have 230 contacts on myspace!"
Our second life has more and more influence on how we feel in our real one. I don't think that is good or in anyway healthy, but I have to admit, that the Internet occures to have this effect on me as well.
Anyway, I'm not like this couple who married in "Second Life" and in real life and got divorced in both, because he betrayed her in the visual world. That's insane, right?!