Disconnected

I wasn't online at home until late 2001,about 10 months before I started this blog, when I moved in with Jen. We had a dial-up modem, and in order to go online, we had to unplug the phone to plug in the modem. It's funny how primitive that seems now, but at the time, I knew no better.

The good thing about the dial-up modem, not to mention the fact that the computer was tucked away in the master bedroom, meant that it was hard to make it the center of our existence. It wasn't on all day, so I checked it at discrete intervals rather than having it immediately available whenever I had a sudden whim.

One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that if I like doing something, I tend to overdo it. It's a good thing that I never got into alcohol or other recreational drugs. Do I have an internet addiction? Possibly. That's one of the reasons I'm backing off from it this month. So far, so good, although I haven't been as productive as I thought I would be.

There were a couple of days this week when I didn't turn the computer on at home at all. I did take it to work with me though, but I limited how much time I spent on it. I'll also admit to checking my phone at home on those days, just to make sure that there were no messages that required immediate response. We tend to live in a world where people expect timely responses. The younger generations growing up in first world countries (and in some cases, third world ones) know no other way of life. Everything is immediate. Everything is now. That's the thing about e-mail and social media. It doesn't come once a day like snail mail. This creates a desire to constantly check and recheck various inboxes and homepages. As I was typing this paragraph, my phone buzzed twice, indicating that I now have two unread e-mails. It's constant.

In a profound way, to be connected is to be disconnected.