This year my husband and I are attempting to get some control over the technology in our house/lives. Good effing luck, right? In any event, we are trying to get the right gadgets talking to each other, and make sure the wrong gadgets aren’t in on the scoop, and make sure the parent accounts know what is going on with the kid stuff and so on. It is a mess, probably exacerbated by the fact that I am waaaaay out of my comfort zone with this stuff.

In fact, I am the opposite of intuitive, technologically speaking. Like, if something bad happens while I am downloading something or updating something, then what I think I subsequently should do is exactly the opposite of what I actually should do. While this is an unfortunate condition, I know I’m not alone. In fact, I think I should develop my own app called Opposite Day that you access before doing anything requiring aptitude on your device. You enter your plan and my app laughs its ass off at you, and then saves you from yourself.

While many folks worry that technology is driving us farther and farther apart, my husband and I find ourselves drawn together by this culture, in a little Oz-like island where we are behind the curtain trying to convince all the little people here that we are know what the hell we are doing. Also, we find we agree on many technology-related things, like do we want Find Your Spouse’s Phone capabilities (hell to the no on that from both sides), and also that the Blackberry keypad is constantly missed, regardless of all of the iPhone’s badass qualities. These things are the glue that holds us together, people. Do not underestimate how technology is constantly bringing folks closer.

So with the New Year there are new reflections and new promises and new hopes, and not just in regards to mini iPads and iPhones. This year, I resolve to take more risks and to put myself out there more . . . and by there, I mean here. Even if I worry that I will probably write something that is completely out of control or worry that I won’t ever write something completely out of control, I know that outside of your comfort zone is where the magic happens – or the cocaine (according to GIRLS season two, episode three).

Two tweets that are stuck in my brain regarding this are: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage” – and – “We only ever leap from strength to strength on paper. Behind the scenes rests a million things gone wrong.” There are two important things to note here. First, these quotes reveal my most basic nature (hopeful, yet realistic=conflicted). And second, that I love Twitter, when not long ago I thought it was cuckoo. This is what happens when you get over yourself and try something new.

Now, if I can just find a way to climb out of the technological rabbit hole I seem to have fallen into, so that I can get back to living my life in real time. Face to face. If I don’t watch out I may find that that is the new spot of discomfort – dealing with actual humans that aren’t connected via keyboard. And what an irony if that happened to me, the girl whose masters’ thesis was titled “Word Unplugged.”

I once wrote a New Year’s essay about getting WAY out of my comfort zone, like you had to take a plane then a bus then a boat then another boat and then strap on a second-stage and an air tank to get there. I am thinking it is important to remember those times when you were brave. This is the year to be that way again.