The challenges with online conversations are immense. There is the fact that others can’t see your body language or hear your tone of voice, so those subtle but important cues are MIA. Then there’s the fact you can’t read theirs. Nor do you know where they’re at, ie are they cranky and commuting or mellow sipping wine on their veranda? Will they “get” the joke or take offence? And then there’s the fact these conversations are public–who knows how other people will read them? Finally, the conversations are never, ever lost. They may be buried under a ton of other stuff and general disinterest, but even Twitter is being saved by the Library of Congress.

All of which is the long intro into a sentence I wanted to share on Tumblr, but hesitated because it was just so foolish. Someone was talking about skiing and I wanted to say…

I love skiing. It’s the snow I hate.

Which is a total lie because the one time I went to the snow I took a look at the skis, the chaos outside and hid in the chalet. But the comment still strikes me as funny. One of those things no one else would laugh at, so hidden here at my blog and surrounded by self-defensive chat.