Yesterday I was reading blogs and watching news reports on identity theft and thought, hmm…it’s been a while since I’ve googled myself to see what info is out there…so I googled, and in doing so, I found out that there was way too much information floating around cyberspace including addresses where I used to live in LA, phone numbers that I don’t remember giving out, and just way too much personal stuff. Granted, I am all for the transparency and love the Internet, but I just thought maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t be sharing all the details of my life with the Internet. I’d leave the sharing to real life.

So I’m updating all my social networking sites, you know the ones, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and I decided that I didn’t really want to be defined by my relationship status. I mean, cool, if you are the one who checks up on past loves to see if they are married or not, and fine if you are a singleton who likes to tell people she is perpetually single and loathing it. I am neither one of these people, so I thought, what harm will it do deleting this…this minuet detail of my life (the most uninteresting part of my life, I might add)…well let me tell you! I must be one popular lady because the flurry of emails I received today was dumbfounding. People stopped me in the hall today at work to ask who I was dating, where’d we meet, what’s he like…I guess I was more popular in facebook life than I thought!

And it got me thinking…with so much transparency on the web and people knowing everything about everyone…where you can become a celebrity because of one You Tube video, where you can follow people around on Twitter 24/7…in a world that is increasingly knowing more about you than you know about yourself, and where you are judged on your current status… what’s left to learn about someone?

So if you are REALLY that interested in my life (you flatter me…I’m not even that interested in this part of my life!), here’s the facts:

Yes, I deleted my relationship status on facebook, and Yes, I am still single. Yes, most times I love this status…and Yes, sometimes I hate it. Yes, I eventually want to spend my life with someone, and Yes, I’ll probably want kids. But NO, I am not defined by my facebook relationship status. And neither should you be.

This is what being American feels like. Today. Seeing so many voters taking part. It’s insane. It’s beautiful. It’s history. Some day my kids will ask me where I was. I should be at Grant Park, but I hate crowds. And public transit. And massive amounts of people. Plus I didn’t have the golden ticket. So whatever.

I’m here, texting my sister who’s in a bar in DeLand (NoManLand) Florida, waiting for the Florida projection…talking online to a couple friends via Facebook, and staring at the TV screen where ABC is doing a great job of coverage. They have this crazy touchscreen board where Charlie Gibson touches a state, and it zooms into counties, and then he touches it again, and it gets all the stats of the state, down to black versus latinos, versus first time voters versus people making over $200,000. I love technology. It’s insane.

And I’m in awe. Even sitting watching election coverage, walking the dog for the nighttime walk, the air is filled with excitement, filled with this energy of extreme hope of a new tomorrow. Whatever the outcome, at least, for right now, for this night only, people care about this election, which means they care about democracy, which means they care about America. And that is a powerful thing.

It doesn’t matter who you voted for, who you’re rooting for, and who you hope to win. It’s the fact that you voted. You participated. You showed up and took matters into your own hands. And that deserves more than a free tall burnt cup of coffee from Starbucks. That deserves admiration. That deserves a pat on the back (even if its just you patting yourself on the back). That deserves a deep breath and a swell of American pride. Tonight, Americans finally showed up…and I can’t help but feel optimistic.

Here’s to optimisim. Here’s to a new tomorrow. Here’s to America.