I want to be alone.
I want to disconnect.
When do people leave you alone?

I have a website. I have three electronic mail addresses I access from my home computer and my office computer. I have a voice-mail pager and a cellular telephone I take with me everywhere. I have a home phone number, two office numbers and an office fax machine.

I was paged 23 times on Tuesday. 23 times. I didn’t know I knew enough people to be paged that many times. And, of course, each and every call had to be returned. And I was carrying my cell phone, so I couldn’t just ignore the messages. Damn! I’m just too nice for my own good.

I know that I’m not making any sense. I bought the cell phone and the pager. I signed myself up for at least half a dozen e-mail discussion lists. I made the decision to put up a website. I connected myself and I did it because I wanted to have the information now. I wanted to be accessible now. I wanted to always be accessible. I wanted to be connected.

It worked. Right now, if you knew how, you could get in touch with me at any time of the day or night. It wouldn’t matter where I was, what I was doing or intending to do, you could reach out and touch me. I got what I wanted.

Now I want to give it back.

I’m tired of jumping when something dings, beeps or comes to life. You can take back my technology. You can forget about me for a couple of weeks.

I don’t give out my cell phone number to anyone. In fact, I don’t even keep it on. I turn it on when I need to return a page or when I need to get in touch with someone. Other than that it’s just a clunky toy at the bottom of my bag. My pager’s message instructs you to leave a message. You wouldn’t know to page me unless I told you that it’s a pager. And I would only told you if you were important enough to know. I’ve stopped returning voice mails immediately and faxes are put on the pile in my “in box” instead of being tackled at once.

And it’s not just the technology, the immediacy of it all that’s bothering me. It’s interacting with other people. People in general are just getting on my nerves. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to interact, be social, be polite or be “on.” I don’t want to have to be me for a long, long while.

So I’ve started to pay for my gas at the pump. I do my grocery shopping at midnight (at a 24-hour market). I go to Wal-Mart at off-hours to buy all the weekly essentials (also a 24-hour store). I avoid the crowds that way. And believe me, it’s worth it.

I bank by going to the drive-thru and using the ATM. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I actually walked into the bank. When I need to make an inquiry I call the 800 number. When I need new checks I mail the form in using a pre-addressed envelope. I never have to see another human being and I get the service that I want.

It’s heaven.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an interactive, social kind of person. I enjoy watching other people, I love to talk to others and hear their stories and watch their faces as the stories unfold. I work in public relations and dealing with people is written in stone. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But right now I would gladly take a cabin in the woods with no phone and no computer and no fax machine and maybe an old truck to go into town to get food and stuff . . . for about four or five days.

With a television, of course. Just because I don’t want to interact doesn’t mean I want to cut myself completely off.

What would you suggest?

A funny thing happened on my way to maturity — I had too much fun being immature. I kept thinking of being an adult and, in my mind, it was the same thing as being dull. So I refused the label of adult the same way I had once refused to be part of the crowd, with blind arrogance. And it got me nothing.

Then one day I stopped and looked around. I saw adults who were having fun, grown-ups who could teach me a thing or two about enjoying life and making my mark in the world. They were ROLE MODELS. And, after some hard knocks and soul searching, I accepted the fact that I had to grow up. I really had no choice. If I had to do it anyway, I should do it with style.

And I have.

That little story can be applied to this space of mine. One day, on impulse, I went to the information technology people at work and filled out all of the paperwork to make them give me some web space. I then proceeded to fill it up with one page where I could play around with design. It was a simple enough idea. I had the space, it was mine, and I could do with it whatever I wanted.

I used it to advertise myself. I know what you’re thinking, I do know . . . vain, selfish, egocentric. True, but that’s what I did.

I looked at what I had created a few months after I started up, without structure, without purpose, without identity, and decided to give it a little bit of order. I had been putting my words out there, blatantly ignoring any advice and comments on how to be better. Thinking of the site as something that was created for others was something I didn’t want to do. It was too serious. It was too adult. It too grown up. It wasn’t me. So I stopped and regrouped and approached the space from the eyes of a committed webjefa.

My site grew up.

Fast-forward one year. My little space is no longer entertaining, at least not to me. I keep trying to make it better by giving it window dressing and it remains stale. It became something I no longer enjoyed. In my desire to provide my readers with something that would make sense, I killed my interest in what I was doing.

I’ve tried to make it fun again, but I keep getting caught up in that serious spirit as if it were a virus or an infection that clings to me every time I opened the files. My solution is to shelve the old site and start fresh. This site is my fresh start. Please pardon the dust, the innovations and the new identity — giving birth to a new site is a tedious, loving, enthusiastic event that can go wrong or go right. But I intend to love every moment.

Since I’m going away again for a week or so, I’ve actually posted some stuff for all of my loyal fans. I’ve reposted several feature and editorial articles that I took down in the last major renovation of this site. They’re mostly fluff pieces that may or may not be relevant anymore. For the readers who have been with me since the beginning, I hope you enjoy visiting some old favorites. For my new readers, I hope you enjoy these stories. I will actually make a couple of changes before June 24, when I’m off to Miami for the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ conference. It should be fun. In the meantime, have a nice weekend.

Welcome to my new parlor, people. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve changed the look of this site slightly. I got sick of the color scheme and the layout. Unfortunately, these changes are purely window dressing. I don’t have anything new for you. Except, of course, a few recommendations. {{water}} is a must-see. The design of this site puts me to shame. My silly little dive into the web will go unnoticed and forgotten easily, {{water}} will not. I comfort myself with the fact that the site keeper lives online for a living, but that is the only comfort I can keep. I don’t make regular updates anymore and my ramblings have become cotton candy, all fluff and no substance. Hispanic/Latino News Service – Daily Roundup is a great source of Latino news. It’s a great resource that links to newspapers and news sources across the country.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to give you some real words soon.