Merging of My Worlds...

I don't know why, but I compartmentalize everything in my life. There are my politico friends that are broken into location and campaign... there are my friends from each separate semester or groups of semesters... there are church friends from each location... best friends that are not broken down only by location or time... extended family... my immediate family... family friends... and acquaintances broken down by the reason I know or met them. To say it is a complicated system is an understatement. For some reason it makes sense in my head and I remember people by the time, place, and organizations I have met them.

The weirdest thing is that over the past couple of years I have slowly merged my groups together - partly out of necesity and partly because the network is just getting too big to parse every group out to a different type of interaction. This also parallels church friends becoming political and political friends becoming more than just coworkers.

At one point I had means of communication just for personal friends and other means for professional and religious friends, but now everybody uses all of the means. All groups follow me on twitter, all groups write on my facebook wall, and all friends are on my gchat friend list. I am simultaneously chatting about FHE and temple trips, volunteer recruitment, and friends traveling to visit with everyone at any given time. Part of me likes that my worlds are mixing, but then again it creates a bit more chaos in my world that at some point may come back to bite me.

I'm able to remember faces, names, and distinguishing features from conversations largely because my worlds are so isolated from each other and I can at least narrow down which part of my life someone comes from. It's how I remember thousands of names during any one campaign and remember most folks from previous wards, cities, and campaigns. Now - that isn't so much how it works. I guess what sparked this was I was on facebook early this morning and someone's post came up that I legitimately didn't remember. I saw the name - scanned my head for a state, interaction, or anything that would break down that person into the appropriate group that he fit into. I did come to remember who he was - an acquantance from a ward I was in at BYU - but it took me by surprise to not remember and to not be able to immediately recognize him.

Here's to keeping it all straight and together in the future as my world blends together into one large electronic and personal interaction. I guess it had to happen sometime...