D'vorahDavida
Yetzirah

Home again and ready to rock and roll.

I have learned quite a few things these last many days and made more than a few goals to change some computer strategies around here. I have been wading through spam and weeding out the precious DD notifies from the Viagra ads and have narrowed it down to 115 emails that require attention. I am looking forward to catching up on what's been happening while I was "out to lunch", so to speak.

After seeing the truly abominable amount of spam I am getting, I am seriously thinking about changing my email address. Which is what my ISP advises. So that may get done some time this week. Anyway, it's good to be home, and what follows is a journal entry made while on my week long computer hiatus.

August 18- Day One

So far the "no computer" experiment is a non-event. I'm not having any major withdrawal symptoms, although it DID occur to me last night that my latest weblog review was probably on the page now and I was curious to look at it. And even more curious to find out what the reviewee thought of it!

But the urge passed fairly quickly.

I realize that this is not a true and proper test of abstinence because I am out of my usual environment and the real deal will be when I get back home.

I read an interesting article in Newsweek magazine by someone named Robert Samuelson that helped me put my finger on some of what has been niggling at the back of my mind about this whole addiction business.

He happened to be writing mainly about cell phones, but here is a paragraph that hit home for me:

"Cell phones - and indeed all wireless devices - constitute another chapter in the ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it. People are supposed to be always capable of participating in the next meeting, responding to their emails or receiving factoids from the internet. People so devoted to staying interconnected are kept in a perpetual state of anxiety, because they may have missed some significant memo, rendevous, bit of news or gossip. They may be more plugged in and less thoughtful."

And -

"But I vow to resist [the cell phone] just as I have resisted the ATM cards, laptops and digital cameras. I agree increasingly with the late poet Ogden Nash, who wrote: 'Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.' "

Well, needless to say I was impressed by this man's take on the subject. 'Perpetual state of anxiety.' That is what has been creeping up on me these last many weeks. And like a low grade fever, I was ignoring it at my own peril.

I have enough hormonally induced anxiety at the moment, without adding 'digital separation anxiety' to the pile. I'm ashamed to admit that I probably check in at the Weblog Review site 20 times a day (or more) to see who wrote what and who said what to whom about what was written. I mean even as I was clicking away, I heard my inner critic sneering from my left shoulder,

(Boy, you really are displaying some impressive obsessive compulsive behavior there Cupcake....think you could STOP checking that thing for five minutes? Oh really? PROVE IT!)

I couldn't resist the challenge from old grump face, so here I am.... unplugged.

I've thought of a few strategies for re-structuring my computer use when I get home. Sounds like a note a CEO would leave to themselves on their Palm Pilot eh?

"Note to SELF: Restructure computer department to avoid taking medications to reduce Obsessive/Compulsive disorder."

I wonder who's going to get the axe?

Continued tomorrow. . .