Internet Abstinence

They say the third time's a charm. For me, four is the magic number...at least when it comes to Internet abstinence. I had a difficult time shaking the thoughtless need to check email, read the news, or look up an address or phone number, all the while knowing that each of these tasks is manageable by other means of communication. The thoughtless habit got me every time. It wasn't until my son suggested I put a note on the keyboard that I was able to follow through with this impossible task.

I think as a whole, most of us are reliant upon the Internet. When was the last time you called your friend rather than text or email her to find out the latest gossip or how everyone is doing? When was the last time you used a phone book to find a phone number...or for that matter, called information using a land line. Even the house telephone has become obsolete. How many people do you know who no longer maintain a home telephone and depend solely on cell phone and email communication? How did you feel the last time you forgot your cell phone at home when you went to work or out for the evening? Did you go all the way home just to get it on your lunch hour or make yourself late for a date just to go home and get it?

For years my husband and I have been at a complete loss as to how our kids could have so few friends call the house, yet so many friends on my space. We answered the question when my husband took my 15 year old son and his friend to a hockey game. Throughout the entire game my son and his friend hardly said a word, yet the second they got home they chatted for hours on line about the game.

When I was a kid, we had one classroom in our entire high school (of which my graduating class alone was more than 400) designated for computer class. Computer and typing class were both elective. In 1982 computers stood five feet tall and about four or five feet wide (at least the ones my school provided did). Typewriters were electric and considered new age, but they were not today's word processors. There was no need for computers to be added to the daily curriculum because there were so many careers which did not use these huge, immobile monstrosities. Yeah, there was a lot of talk about how computers were the up and coming rage and if you wanted to be successful in the future, you needed to learn how to use them. Of course, as kids, we knew everything. Take for example the book 1984 by Orson Wells - all talk, right?

I tend to keep myself so busy with my never-ending projects, new and old, that I will probably never have time to wonder, "what will I do with my time if I can't surf the web?" Much of my time that would generally be spent on the web has been spent studying. Ideally, I would have loved to have spent it doing more simple things, such as watching the sun set in person rather than that of a picture on the wall (or my blog), picking flowers rather than buying them in the check out line, playing with the dogs rather than yelling at them, and helping my son with his homework without saying, "let's move it along - I have work to do." These wonderfully relaxing tasks have become burdensome and things of the past. The world has changed and although we have come a million miles forward in technology, we have been traveling in reverse almost just as fast with regard to appreciation of the world's beauty and the people we care about most. If only we could find a happy medium somewhere between the two, this world would be a much friendlier place.