Susan is....

I know that many people are obsessed with Facebook. I have a Facebook account, and I'll check it a few times during the week. However, some people will check it every few hours, updating their info, leaving comments, and looking through everyone's new photos. 

I'll be the first to admit that I spend a fair amount of time on my computer, but it's usually spent on Google Reader (which is one of my favorite tools). 

One thing I do love about Facebook is the status.  At the top of every page, there's bar that asks you "What are you doing right now?" If you click on it, it says "Susan is ...", prompting you to explain what you are doing in a sentence. Very easy if "Susan is reading Watchmen" or "Susan is baking cookies," but how about "Susan is feeling lonely" or "Susan is ecstatic." 

Even though I rarely fill it in on the page, I find myself absentmindedly filling in the blank in my head throughout the day. There's something mollifying about being able to reduce prodigious states of consciousness into a concise sentence. "Susan is.... lethargic," "Susan is expansive," "Susan is contemplative."

My mother is often frustrated with the enormity of the English vocabulary, mostly because she is the one who ends up needing to interpret an abundance of words which meanings have only a gradation of difference.  

I revel in nuance. That may be why I have a hard time defining words - how can I define a word that is already perfect in its tenor (meaning? purport? essence?).  I'd make a terrible interpreter, or at least a very slow one. 

Because of the vastness (immensity?expanse?scope?) of our language, it's almost a game to come up with the right word to fill in the blank. "Susan is reflective," "Susan is livid,""Susan is impish." Thousands of states of being, just waiting to be defined.

So often I want to simply leave it as "Susan is." But in the social setting of Facebook, it just seems cheesy, or spuriously clever. 

So I'll have to save "Susan is." as a deeply personal state of mind.