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fivemackI'm sure Christmas cards are not intended to fill the writer with gloomy thoughts of entropy.
But as I write them, I realise that there are lots of people who I know well on IRC and on Livejournal, but of whose postal address I have no good idea. Sometimes I remember I've seen a change-of-address on LJ, but it'll be friends-only so unGooglable, and will have passed beyond the skip=50 barrier so become almost impossible to browse to.
At least those are people who write about what they're doing, so I feel in touch with them, and hope that, when not on Saturn, I write enough about my life that they feel some degree of contact with me. I can offer them a merry Christmas and my best wishes for 2005 here, even if I can't find postal addresses, and our Livejournal posts tell them I still exist and know they exist, which is really the only other function of Christmas cards.
But there are people I knew from school and from Oxford, who I really don't want to rationalise as having forgotten entirely, but of whom all the information I have is a three-year-old mobile number, a four-year-old street address, and a vague idea of who they were working for in 1999. Whether separately or together, these data are about as useful as three-year-old mince pies, four-year-old satsumas and a vague recollection of what someone got for Christmas in 1999; people move houses, move jobs and move phones more often than that, and mail seldom forwards.
Maybe my cunning anti-SAD purchase of three desk lamps with bright compact-fluorescent bulbs was inadequate, and I should get more of them.
But as I write them, I realise that there are lots of people who I know well on IRC and on Livejournal, but of whose postal address I have no good idea. Sometimes I remember I've seen a change-of-address on LJ, but it'll be friends-only so unGooglable, and will have passed beyond the skip=50 barrier so become almost impossible to browse to.
At least those are people who write about what they're doing, so I feel in touch with them, and hope that, when not on Saturn, I write enough about my life that they feel some degree of contact with me. I can offer them a merry Christmas and my best wishes for 2005 here, even if I can't find postal addresses, and our Livejournal posts tell them I still exist and know they exist, which is really the only other function of Christmas cards.
But there are people I knew from school and from Oxford, who I really don't want to rationalise as having forgotten entirely, but of whom all the information I have is a three-year-old mobile number, a four-year-old street address, and a vague idea of who they were working for in 1999. Whether separately or together, these data are about as useful as three-year-old mince pies, four-year-old satsumas and a vague recollection of what someone got for Christmas in 1999; people move houses, move jobs and move phones more often than that, and mail seldom forwards.
Maybe my cunning anti-SAD purchase of three desk lamps with bright compact-fluorescent bulbs was inadequate, and I should get more of them.
