Staying Connected

Jessica observed the other day that at this point in history it doesn't matter where on earth you live, because so much of your professional life occurs online. That is certainly true for her, and for the writing side of my career. I only speak to my literary agent a couple times a year, for example. A month ago we had an hour-long Skype call to discuss my latest manuscript. I was in a Holiday Inn in Goa. It was night for me, morning for her--but there is a time difference to negotiate between California and New York, too. It was a productive meeting.

Okay, so Jessica's statement is not so true for doctors, teachers, and others who work face-to-face with clients and colleagues. But she got me thinking about other applications of the phenomenon of distance-irrelevance. One of the things I like best about living abroad is that my long-distance friendships and familyships have been unchanged by the change in distance. I only see my parents two or three times a year, for example, but I have corresponded with them more since I've been in India and feel like I have a better sense of what's going on in their lives from 8000 miles away than I did from 400.

The same is true is with old friends. To a friend in Virginia, what does it matter if I live in California or India? Either way, our relationship consists of typed words. And because I have been corresponding more since I've been in India (because I have more time, because it seems like the right thing to do...) these long-distance relationships feel stronger here than they did when I was in California.

I also feel like a better US citizen here. Mostly this is because I have more time--you could argue that if I had more time to browse the New York Times online from my office in California I would feel just as well-informed. What I'd like to point out, though, is that for a writer (or a computer programmer, or a day trader, or anyone who sits by himself in a room all day) the feeling of "localness" is no longer defined by where you are. For example, I have a "Menlo Park, CA News" heading on my Google News page. News articles from all over the web that mention Menlo Park show up there. I find that by reading that list of articles, I feel more Menlo Parky than I did most weeks when I was living in Menlo Park--weeks in which I rushed up and down the peninsula by car and train sometimes twice a day, grading papers in every scrap of time. Even the most annoying hallmark of localness--reminder emails from the elementary-school class parents--have continued to find me here. And I have continued to delete them, unread.

So yeah, Jessica, you were right. As long as you and Violet are with me, it doesn't matter where I live.