Megan Stielstra's Blog

While screwing around on Facebook yesterday, I came across a group called I AM NOT ENGAGED, PREGNANT, OR BUYING A CONDO.

Oh hahahaha! I thought. That's so witty! I must join immediately!

Except: I'm married, have a kid, and own a condo.

Now, if I quibble (what a LOVELY verb!) over semantics, I'm still eligible for membership, right? Technically, I'm not engaged, pregnant, nor buying a condo. Those phrases all indicate being on the verge of such thresholds, thresholds I've already and quite happily walked across. So why, praytell, do I want to join the damn thing?

It may have something to do with the fact that, last night in class, I referred to The Smiths, and no one knew what I was talking about. Or a few weeks ago, I said, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” and got a blank look in return. And this morning, on the train, I read this really disturbing article in the Atlantic about how people don’t read books anymore because of the quick-fix that is the internet, and it’s become difficult to digest more involved narratives because we’re so trained in google soundbites, status updates, and Twitter Tweets, and I know I’ve been Twittering lately instead of blogging because I just don’t have the time to sit down and write something longer, or maybe it’s that I don’t have the patience, and also, I have gray hair. I do. And a mortgage, mortgage with a capitol MORGE, I mean, “escrow” is an oft-used word in my current vocabulary. The world is changing, people; I’m changing—I used to be the girl who could join an I’M NOT ENGAGED, PREGNANT OR BUYING A CONDO FACEBOOK GROUP and now, now, now I’m an adult, one who is, like, shocked when someone doesn’t know The Smiths, one who is watching her 401K capsize, one who begins sentences with BACK IN MY DAY, who reads books, who will buy the good wine over the cheap wine ‘cause I’m not drinking to get drunk, I’m drinking ‘cause it tastes good, and I’m relaxing, it’s the end of the day in my home that I own with my husband that I married and our kid is asleep in the next room and still, still, still I check my Facebook account. Regularly. Because—and I’m not afraid to admit this—I LIKE STALKING.

(quick sidenote: We have two fan-f'ing-tastic interns for 2nd Story, and they went to this fancy professional-y audience development conference for us [Amanda and I couldn’t go]. Halfway through, I started getting texts from both of them about how the whole conference was old white men talking about these new-fangled computery thingiemabobs, have you heard of them? Facebook? Myspace? Twitter? And my interns [so awesome, these girls. Give them jobs. Pay them excessively] were like, D'uh, Old White Men! and then came back to the office and wrote a very detailed report which said, essentially, D'uh, Old White Men! except in very formal language. My point: Facebook as an effective networking/audience development tool cannot be argued, and while I'm enjoying 2nd Story's surge in attendance since we started Facebooking and eBlasting and Twittering our shows, I also regularly enjoy the excuse of Facebook as a networking tool when what I really want to do is poke around in people's lives, find out all sorts of juicy gossip and read witty status updates [many of which say things like SO AND SO IS UNCOMFORTABLE WITH HIS/HER ADDICTION TO FACEBOOK or SO AND SO IS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT FACEBOOK or SO AND SO DOESN'T CHECK THEIR FACEBOOK OFTEN (lies!) because to draw attention to your discomfort with Facebook allows you to hold on to your last shred of street cred. Except, Facebook is the new street cred. Like how thirty is the new twenty and beige is the new black. According to that Vogue I read in the doctor's office. 'Cause, of course, I don't subscribe to Vogue. Only Harper's, Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker (and Cookie, my new favorite parenting magazine, which I'm stating here in parenthesis because it doesn't go with the sarcasm I'm trying to create, that whole "I'm so totally smart, I flick my nose at thee, Facebook,” flick! flick!)] [Aren’t I on top of my parenthetical-within-the-parenthetical! Usually I have to go back to the top to remember if I was in them or out of them] [good morning! My kid woke up at five! I've had so much coffee!] so whatever, I have a Facebook account).

Maybe, what I’m trying to say here is: I'm getting old.

And maybe, what I’m trying to say is, FINALLY.

But who knows, ‘cause I really don’t have time to think about all that what with everything that’s been going on, like, my kid can STAND ALL BY HIMSELF FOR SIX WHOLE SECONDS. And my students just turned in their rewrites, they’ve been working so hard and I’m really proud. And 2nd Story is throwing a ginormous New Years Eve party! You should come! And I'm working on this book, and I'm having FUN: no deadline, no pressure, just that slow, delicious process of figuring out the characters and the story, and I've sort of forgotten what that feels like. And other stuff, not that there needs to be more, 'cause the above is plenty, but there's always more, stuff that jumps out of the woodwork, it's life, it moves, run run run so you don't get left behind, and I've been so busy keeping up with everything that I haven't sat still to really consider this whole new reality I've recently entered, one that wouldn’t be welcome in an I’M NOT ENGAGED, PREGNANT OR BUYING A CONDO Facebook group, not because I’m married, have a kid and own a condo, but rather because I’m lucky enough to have found things that really matter to me, and I don’t have the time or inclination to be all witty and ironic and concerned with societal norms and unrecognized social conditioning and what, what, what does it all mean?

The girl I used to be spent a LOT of time worrying about that stuff.

The girl I am, man, she’s too busy. She just poured herself a really fancy glass of wine and curled up on the couch with Anna Karenina.