I resisted the pressure to join LinkedIn until last week, when a friend sat me down for a heart to heart about why it’s important to be part of this part professional, part social-networking site. I finally gave in and joined. And I was OK with it until I saw a staggering figure: 23,700. With just the few contacts that I’ve added, LinkedIn estimates that I am indirectly connected with 23,700 professionals. Seriously.

Seriously? That number is high enough to send an introvert like me heading for the Cascade Mountains. As someone who has spent most of my life trying to limit the number of people who have access to me, this figure is more than a little disconcerting. I mean, 23,700 is greater than the number of relatives in most polygamist families.

And what I’m attempting to convey by that is: That’s a whole helluva lot of indirect contacts. Imagine trying to feed and/or entertain and/or house a group that size. Not even the Las Vegas Convention Center could accommodate them all. (OK, maybe it can. Perhaps I am indulging in a little fuzzy math, but don’t we all from time to time? Fuzzy math gives us some wiggle room with the facts, allows us let loose and have fun in our meandering and meaningless blog posts, and apparently assists us with the weighty task of running countries into the ground.)

I can’t even imagine how many people my friend with 66 contacts on LinkedIn is indirectly connected to, let alone how he manages to fall asleep at night knowing that those indirect connections exist. I bet he counts connections when he can’t sleep: 40,057, 40,058, 40,059.

Or maybe it’s only me who’s disturbed by these connections. I am someone who, after nearly 37 years, can count on two hands the number of important, influential people in my life: those who have had a significant effect on me, who have fundamentally shaped who I was at any given point and who have influenced who I’ve become.

But before you go feeling sorry for me (I can hear you now with your “Oh poor Dana! She’s so lonely and alone in life. Boo-hoo for her” business), please know that this lack of connections is completely and totally by design: I have spent years avoiding people, pushing them away and being so selective in my relationships that I had very very (very) few during my lifetime. So few that there’s not even a carrying of the tens place involved.

Actually, since the list is so short, why don’t I break it down quickly (not in order of appearance): my father, my mother, my brother, my sister, my first flute teacher, my second flute teacher, my third flute teacher, my band instructor, my first writing instructor, my first poetry instructor, my rhetoric instructor, my women’s history instructor, my African-American literature instructor, my brilliant poet/feminist/women’s studies student/instructor/friend, my environmental science instructor …

*deep breath*

… my first boyfriend, my second boyfriend, my third boyfriend, my fourth boyfriend-turned-first-husband, my second (and so far last) husband who is also known as my current husband and is also known as LoveShack, my first boyfriend’s mother, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law (and yes, I mean that — I am not including the in-laws to be nice), and a Web architect guy I used to work with who is my current BFF. Yes, that’s about it.

OK, so I re-read that list, whilst counting on my fingers, and indeed the sum is more than 10. Seems I’ve been up to more fuzzy math. But the important take-away here is that the sum is not that much more than 10. It’s so close to 10 that I am sure you can see why a figure like 23,700 (albeit indirect) contacts would put the fear of God in me.

The fear of God that was strong enough to have me doing things like singing him Simon & Garfunkel tunes at night when I was a child. (In my defense, I didn’t know any proper religious songs to sing to him after my prayers).

The fear of God that was strong enough for me to believe his wrath would come down on me for watching the dirty movie Bolero when I was a teenager. (That wrath never did come down. I am still waiting. With bated breath. And BTW, I could have picked a much dirtier movie. Since I was up for sinning, why didn’t I sin big!)

The same fear of God that … OK, fine. I don’t have a third example. I basically got over the fear of God thing at about age 15, after committing about every sin listed in … what is that book again? … oh yes The Bible … that is until the 23,700 indirect contacts through LinkedIn entered my life. Now I am afraid, very afraid.

And to what can my people-aversion be attributed? My father’s premature death? Probably in part. My mother’s abuse? Yeah, I’d say that ranks up there for sure. But can’t a person be a loner these days without all the psychoanalysis? I am, after all, living in an individualistic society, so I don’t know what the BFD is about wanting to be alone.

That’s why LinkedIn at once fascinates and annoys me: It seems to be the Westernized, online version of the meishi ritual, a formal Japanese business introduction after which a person can call on his or her introducee anytime and has access to all that person’s contacts and connections.

The idea of LinkedIn is nice in theory, but does it work in practice? I for one would rather be UnLinkedIn — at home, alone, listening to Simon & Garfunkel or watching a few dirty movies.

I’m kidding about the dirty movies. I don’t watch them. The closest I come (no pun intended) is the HBO series “Cathouse.” That’s some pretty great television viewing.

No harm was done to polygamists during the writing of this post. Or to God. Or to LinkedIn, which will probably hold up no matter what I write about it.

My windshield wipers have decided that they won’t shut off when I turn them to the OFF position. They keep wiping and wiping, then they stutter for a while and stop for maybe five seconds before starting to wipe wipe wipe again.

I was watching a program yesterday about a woman who thought she was being haunted but really she was projecting all her anxiety and frustration outward and, through her PK energy, had manifested a poltergeist. At least that’s what the experts in the program purported.

I started thinking about how my anxiety might look if it were turned into a poltergeist. It scared me to think about this. I assume it would be dark and smoky, that it would block all entrances and exits, that it would suffocate.*

But with my luck it’s only controlling my car’s windshield wipers. It would be just like my poltergeist to be an annoyance rather than anything impressive. If I am going to have a poltergeist, I at least want to be able to get on TV as a result. No medium is going to come out and sit on my car, waiting to make contact with whatever has taken up residence in the wiper arms while a bored camera crew looks on. That simply wouldn’t make for good television viewing.

I guess I’d better take things into my own hands and throw some holy water on the wipers then burn a bundle of cleansing sage on my car’s hood. Oh wait, that only works on ghosts, not manifestations of PK energy. Maybe I should just have the wiper motor replaced. That ought to do it.

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Notes

My anxiety in fact already does all these things, although it is only dark and smoky in a figurative sense. It has made no physical appearances. At least not yet.

Yesterday there was so much flooding around my house that I couldn’t make it to work. All roads from here to there were impassable. So after more than an hour of trying, I gave up and made my way home.

Today was going better until I went for a walk and saw a dead animal lying in the street. I couldn’t even tell you what kind of animal it was for sure, since there was no head and it was very waterlogged.

At first I thought it was a rubber chicken, but then I saw a tail and tufts of matted hair clinging here and there to the body. Otherwise, the skin was smooth and hairless, about the color and texture of a latex glove. Its two back feet were also noteworthy. Both were puffed up so much they resembled cartoon drawings of feet. My guess is it was a possum. I felt bad for it, lying there in a pool of water along with leaves and debris.

Now I am back inside watching the sun come out. My neighbor’s tacky holiday decorations, which litter his yard, keep falling over. Santa and his reindeer are currently face-down in the dirt. This pleases me.

I continue to be afraid when the sun sets. Every single evening, it is as if my body believes this will be the last time it will feel the world grow dark.