This has come up twice in the past few days, and I'm going to address the second one first. In a conversation with my boss we were discussing the relative benefits of working remotely (as I do) and how some people are better cut out for the role than others. I commented to him - and it's a comment I've made to others also - that as I tend to express myself better in the written word than the spoken, that it suits me well. I've said it before, but it bears repeating - I have the best job in the world. The caveat here is that it is the best job in the world *for me*. Many would disagree, I'm sure.
The second conversation (or the first, I guess) was with Aurelius, and we were discussing how easily we would be able to abandon what he terms "Cyberia". Of course, being a hypothetical question, I had to discount a certain amount of reality - not the least of which being that, if I were to switch off my internet connection, I'd no longer have a job (see earlier "best job in the world" comment). That aside though, my own response surprised me a little, it was "yes, without question". It was then - and please forgive me if I delve into a little self-analysis here - that I realised I've come full-circle from where I was about two years ago. Then, the concept of making friends, being interactive and being socially accepted by my peers was king. Now, I really just want to please me.
Granted, if I didn't have the internet to play with, my gadget-addiction would probably have me pulling the toaster apart, but that aside, I think I've finally achieved what I wanted - I'm happy being me, I'm completely comfortable with my own company and impressing others and worrying about what they think is right up there on my list of things to do with vacuuming the curtains.
Perhaps Village Life is exactly what I needed, after all.
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As always, xkcd says it all in Comic 308
xkcd is issued under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license. The statement from the xkcd website can be found here.
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