national day of unplugging.

National Day of Unplugging

Hello, my name is Katie, and I'm an internet addict. A little bit of a television addict too. When I was younger I was driven crazy by people who left televisions on even when they weren't watching, just as a habit. Come in, turn on lights, turn on TV. Now I realize that I do the same thing. Yesterday evening we had BEAUTIFUL weather in Oxford. Even after the sun went down there was just this pervasive feeling of impending Spring, and a sense of all of the energy and reflection and peace that comes with it. I had every intention of leaving my television OFF and cleaning in preparation for company whilst enjoying some music...but by the time 7 o'clock rolled around, I was on my couch, tuned in to NBC and frantically chucking my laptop out of my lap during commercial breaks to run and complete one little household task at a time.

As for the internet, I always used school as an excuse. I HAD to be online constantly because of school...except that 99.9% of my time online was spent on Facebook, iTunes, AIM, celebrity gossip sites, online shopping sites...not exactly school related. Sometime after I graduated, after everyone got jobs and we all moved to different locations and had less time to spend constantly updating our Facebook pages and gabbing on instant messenger, I finally realized that I was still spending a significant portion of my day staring at my laptop screen. Still desperately hanging on even though there really wasn't THAT much to do online anymore. At my low point, I literally couldn't visit a friend's home for an hour without picking up their computer for a quick check of my various pages and accounts.

This was all before smart phones became the norm. Not that I have an iPhone, it's even worse. One of the bigger problems in my last relationship was my failure to connect, and the iPhone was a constant issue. Even in the moment I knew I spent too much time fixated on the screen...playing Mah Jong tiles, checking email, and, again, the ever deadly Facebook page. I knew that he had a point, that it really did make him feel like he may as well have not been in the room with me...but still I couldn't stop.

At first all of these things seemed like they enriched my life. The aforementioned guy and I started dating after exchanging a flurry of MySpace messages...it was just so much easier to be bold on MySpace than to approach each other in person. Watching TV gave us witty things to talk about. Our phones encouraged blatant flirtation via text message. But in the end, I imagine for him it began to feel as if all along I'd really been in a relationship with technology and he was just one of me and technology's many mindless hobbies.

The bottom line is...more and more technology is making me feel like a junkie. I crave the feeling of being connected, and technology gives it to me with little to no effort. The problem is that at the end of the night, when I finally power down the computer, turn the TV off, and place the phone on the charger, I just feel...empty. Like I've wasted precious hours of my life and missed out on things I may have experienced during them, whether they be something as small as watching how peaceful my pup looks curled up and dreaming, or as big as (hah) writing something that turns into a best selling novel. It feels as if it's taking more and more to achieve the high, and like the low of the withdrawal is growing ever more dreadful.

As it often goes, we typically don't buck up and try to fix things until the damage has already been done. So it goes with me. Don't get me wrong, though, I want to cure myself of my addiction to technology for me and me alone. I think that checking off things on my Happy List (referenced previously) will help, but the National Day of Unplugging seems like a really good kickstart. Doesn't hurt that it just so happens we'll have another day of glorious weather for it...