First of all, I can never make up my mind. I don't know what I want to "do with my life." I don't know where I should focus my talent, what I should practice more than another. I consider myself a musician, songwriter, photographer, filmmaker. I dreamed of a multimodal project before I knew there was a word for it. In high school, I began recording voicemails to use as sound collages for songs I was writing. I envisioned a tightly-woven concept album, complete with my own photography, scans of hall passes and notes from girls, screen names scrawled on diner napkins. Of course, in the midst of recording this project, the borrowed computer I was using started having problems. I poured a lot of work into the project, but it was never finished. Also, I was tired of being stopped by the cops for photographing public spaces. I gave up on multimodality. I retreated.

A lot of places were really important to me during this time. I used to have to escape a lot. First, it was to my headphones, absorbing a cannon of rock, roll, and confessional poetry. I taught myself guitar. Then, there was the diner. We would escape in numbers, misfits and outcasts, to where we thought it was okay to only order a cup of coffee and stay for three hours. When I needed to be alone, I could drive to Apple Pie Hill, the highest point in South Jersey. From the top of the fire tower, on a clear day, skylines of both Philly and Atlantic City are visible. When it looked certain that my parents were divorcing, it got ugly. Escape became essential. I bonded with others (kids, really) who couldn't go home. The ultimate escape was moving to Minnesota, alone. The ultimate defeat was moving back.

One common thread through all of this is my car. I've had the same car for more than seven years and 100,000 miles. I feel at home in my car, and (though somewhat morally opposed to the environmental and social havoc it may cause) I feel weird (for lack of a better word) when I haven't driven in a while. I can click on the radio, practice my singing, and if I'm lucky enough to have a passenger, engage in some philosophical conversation.

Then there is "The Space Between Mom and Dad." It has been tricky to navigate. After two years of not speaking to my dad, I reconnected, served as his best man in his wedding, and produced for him a campaign video when he ran for town council. Forgiveness, however, is a complicated process. I remember he canceled my phone number in my first semester away at a college, well into the post-pay-phone era.

And finally, speaking of phones, is this week's development. My girlfriend, who is living in Tennessee, told me that she needs a break from talking on the phone. We can't seem to communicate long distance. My earliest memory is when my parents left to go on a date, and I became hysterical. I remember locking myself away from my well-intensioned grandmother and crying myself to sleep. I have this other memory of being told never to call. Maybe I was just destined to be insecurely attached. Anyway.

There are so many places, physical, mental, spiritual. What do I do?

I remember standing with my first or second grade class in the school library huddled around a large wooden cabinet. The librarian was pulling out long drawers full of index cards and pointed out how each was labeled with a range of the alphabet. She called this device a "card catalog."

By middle school, all the card catalogs had been hauled away to some media center purgatory, and we were in thrall to Google. I remember buying my first CD; about a year later I downloaded my first song on Napster. I also remember being in awe of the real-time abilities of instant messenger.

In high school, getting a girl's screen name seemed to take on the same meaning as getting her number. I thought about every movie which makes reference to getting a number, and how they might all soon be dated. (And what about that universal gesture for rolling down a car window? When will that become an anachronistic vestige?) Still, none of my friends had ever heard of Youtube or Wikipedia.

I feel like I grew up in the borderlands of the digital divide. I didn't have the internet at home until forth grade, and by then my bookshelf was full and my cursive was established. I was told to study in seclusion and learned to give my full attention to the environment around me. If I wanted to read, I would go to the library. If I wanted to socialize, I would go to the diner. If I needed to use the bathroom, that's where I went. No wifi, no laptop, just toilet paper.

I still feel rooted in place. Sometimes when I take my laptop to another place and need to access a file, I get the urge to return to the physical place where it was created. On the other hand, so much of our lives take place on the computer, from job searching to banking to entertainment, and I feel like part of my identity exists within the computer. Still, it's not just any computer, but MY computer that I'm wrapped up in. When I moved down to Glassboro a few weeks ago, I only brought my laptop. It has Microsoft Word and connects to the same internet as you. But after a week of living here, it just didn't feel like home. I decided to bring my desktop down, and now my room feels like mine.