Chat rooms

The Amazon sellers connection board is sometimes a joy and often a nightmare. It's certainly more exciting than TV some evenings. It appears to be populated by the same mixture of people one might meet in any walk of life, with a slightly higher proportion of those who have chosen an isolating job selling on the internet because it's easier than trying to get on in the 'real' world. They start posting on the sellers boards, feel safe because they are hidden, and for a while think they are in the company of like minds, until someone says something that hurts or offends them. There are far more women than I had imagined from the seller names and quite a few suffering from loneliness, even those in marriages and with children. I can understand that. I still remember how wonderful it was to discover I still had an identity beyond the role of wife and mother. I started adding my penn'orth of thoughts into various Amazombie threads because I sit for hours in the shop with nothing much to do, but not because I am lonely, which makes me one of the lucky ones I guess. There's a lot of wit and good humour flying round on a good day. Recently people started to post pictures of themselves and I was surprised by my reaction to the faces that appeared. Prejudices that I hadn't had before about individuals I had met only through their words suddenly changed my feelings toward them. I'm not happy about that insight!!

I look from time to time at the bloggers alongside me here. Today I happened across 'Desperate Japanese Housewife' who writes in an odd mixture of French and English, posting pictures of her Barbie dolls in different outfits she has made. What a very strange world this has become! We can read about people's intimate fantasy lives almost as they are having the fantasy, see into each other's confusion of dreams and fears, and share our attempts to make meanings out of all that we consciously perceive around us.

I always wanted to be able to live beyond myself, beyond the cage that is my personality; to be able to walk into other people's minds and bodies; to experience what they experience. Now we can do it without extra-sensory faculties. It's quite awesome.