Isn't it odd

that people I meet online, or in books, or in music, are sometimes more real to me than the people I say hello to every day?

I spend a lot of time online, I admit, and some pundits and many parents warn that millenials (a term for children entering college age during the 'new millenium') are becoming disassociative - separating themselves from the 'real world' and connecting only to people online, to people who may 'not be what they seem to be'.

I am the mother of four millenials and I spend as much or more time online as they do. And I am connected to people online, through Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal, and GoogleReader, because we have some interest or hobby in common, like my writing group or choir discussion group, or because I admire their work, like Neil Gaiman and Stephen Fry, or have been introduced to their work by said admired people, like Zoe Keating. I follow the RSA in Britain, where smart people talk about things I know nothing about, and where other smart people talk about things I am passionate about, and I follow Smartbitchestrashybooks, where smart people (mostly women) talk about life and love and romance novels and sometimes about men's bodies. I laugh at Cakewrecks and squee at steampunk on Epbot, and sometimes I get an email from this totally obscure band that no one's really heard of, but I found out about them after one of their songs was played on this show I like...

At work, I pull staples out of papers.

Online, I am a writer who is followed by more than one hundred readers from all over the world, including at least one from the United Arab Emirates. At one point, I was publishing several times a week, and I heard from up to 20 people a day, asking why I had written that, or how was this going to end, or couldn't I just put the guys in cowboy hats, or why do I write like an American but spell like a British writer?

At work, I answer the phone and talk to people who need answers I don't have to questions they don't know how to ask.

Online, I get to participate in something bigger than myself - I can step out and join a million people standing for democracy in Egypt, or find a better way to prepare dandelion leaves so my children will eat them, or share a factoid with my cousin's 16 year-old daughter whom I have only met a few times but feel connected to when I see her drawings and she 'likes' my link.

At work, if I do it right, no one notices. And if I get it wrong, everyone does.

Online, I can be whatever I want. I can say whatever I want. I can write whatever I want.

Okay, I can do most of that IRL as well. I'm nearly 50 - I don't care what people think of me as much as I used to.

But online, I can reach out and ask a question and follow a trail and see where it goes. I can look up the strangest fact I can think of and find out something even weirder in a couple of clicks. I can find people and follow them and see what they are interested in. Do you know started following me on Twitter? Chris Garver. From Miami Ink. (I think he'll stop soon, because I'm boring.) But how cool is that? For a few days, I was connected with a tv star, who is also an amazing artist, not that I would ever let him touch me with his needle.

How, you might ask, did a big-time, bad-ass tattoo artist from Miami connect with an small-time, mother-of-four administrative assistant living in Vancouver?

Well, I could tell you. But that would be no fun. Tell you what. See if you can figure it out. Go on. It's all there. Just... follow the trail.