(I wrote this a week or two ago. Forgive my delay in posting. Too many parties, ya know?)

It’s been raining in Greenville lately. My landscape is delicious and grey, yellow leaves plastered to pavement, small rivers running down the street. What is it in me that makes me so happy about these gloomy days?

I drove past a forgotten stone wall, green with age and moss, and thought: If I had a style blog, I’d shoot pictures here.

Of course, I don’t have a style blog. And maybe the thought dropped into mind because I successfully colorblocked today—a greater success considering that I woke up feeling quite sickish. The temptation was to throw on what I call jodhpurs (read: fancy leggings), a long sweater, and leave for work.  But taking a cue from the boys at The Midwestyle who dress better to perform better, I put on tights. A pencil skirt. Boots. A belt. Earrings. It worked. I felt a little better.

But what remained with me after I drove past the wall, and during my quiet lunch at home, and later, when I crawled into bed with hot tea, was that one immediate thought: If I had a style blog, I’d shoot pictures here.

Obviously, I found the wall beautiful—particularly where it was located, across from a little cemetery, sandwiched between two major roads. Few people come down this side street, and few people see this wall. It is lovelier in its loneliness. What does it mean, however, that I instantly processed that beauty in terms of what it could be on the internet?

The internet teaches us to live double lives. Because we share or will share so much of what we experience, we’ve trained ourselves to split our gaze, seeing everything both for what it is and what it will become. A quiet lunch at home is also an Instagram shot that will snag a couple likes. An inside joke with friends is a future hashtag. A dinner party didn’t happen if pictures weren’t taken and a blog post wasn’t written. Right?  The experience of sharing has become almost as—if not more—pleasurable than the experience itself.

Where do we draw the line?

We will never go backwards. The internet will not fade out of our lives; social networking is here to stay. We’re a generation raised in a world where content is king, and the whole of our lives—all the minute bits—is available to be packaged into that content.  And of course, there is joy in writing a thing, or tweeting a thing, or documenting your breakfast, and watching how a meaningless shot of your coffee cup, steaming in the morning, draws people to you, a small constellation of kindred interest or emotion.

But I fear that in the splitting of our gaze, we go cross-eyed, headachey. Our worlds blur, and we simply adjust. I fear that we are losing our ability to truly focus. If you are a person who spends most of your working day in front of the computer (and really, who doesn’t?), the struggle is even harder. Feeling smothered by the internet last week, I contemplated turning my phone off for the entirety of Christmas day. But the thought of what I might miss stopped me. The irony.

This is a tightrope we all walk. In three bullet points, I can’t tell you how to balance better. Even now, Tumblr is open so I can listen to music while I write, and yet a half-finished journal entry lies waiting in the moleskine next to me.

Let’s step out of our wellies sometimes and stop merely splashing through the puddles of our precious experiences. Put on our goggles. Put away our phones. And with great breaths, dive deep into nowness. Let’s swim through the warm patches and the cold spots, a spectrum of temperature change so slight only those who pay attention will notice.