Life Bubbles
People talk about parallel worlds, living in a simulation, etc. The interesting thing is that we all live in different bubbles all of the time, in a way. It’s almost like each of these life bubbles is a tiny world where we interact with other people and often have conversations about different things.
I was born in Mexico, and most of my family and childhood friends are still there. When I go to Mexico, I am in a different bubble. The streets, the people around me, the food, and the conversations are all part of that bubble. I often talk about other topics when I am in Mexico than at work or home in Seattle.
One of my passions is photography, so I follow this topic on the internet. In addition, I follow photographers on social media and often read books about the subject. This is my photography bubble. When I share my thoughts about photography with people from my other bubbles, the reaction is mild, very different from that of someone interested in photography.
My day job is programming. I code for a living, which is another type of writing. You type words on a screen, and these words then get translated into something a computer system understands, causing this system to perform the task described by the written code. This is a very different bubble than my family bubble, Mexico, or photography bubble. My technology bubble includes books, coworkers, conferences, blog posts, projects, etc., and it’s unique and very different from the rest of my life bubbles.
Why a bubble? I think of bubbles because that’s the easiest way for me to interpret the uniqueness and differences of these areas of my life. Each of these bubbles comes with its own characteristics, such as people, conversations, goals, etc.
My life bubbles aren’t entirely shielded from each other, and there are family members interested in photography, friends who work in technology, etc. However, for the most part, when I am at home, I react and behave slightly differently than when I am at work. Of course, this is nothing new, but once I started thinking of these interactions, work, home, hobbies, etc., as different bubbles, it somehow made sense to think of these experiences as bubbles.
My goal is to try and make these life bubbles blend; this can make things simpler and more enjoyable for me. I want to live my life as if everything is part of one big bubble, where everything blends and connects.
As I wrote the sentence above, I thought of Ben Stiller’s new TV series “Severance.” Trust me, I do not want to live separate lives as the fictional characters do in that show. It’s sad.
