Digital Age

Facebook is a really great tool for keeping in touch with friends and family all across the globe. It's a great platform for discussing myriad topics and issues in near-real time, It's a convenient place for finding and relaying information and creativity...

But I feel like it has taken over my life, in the same way that TV seems to take over people's lives. I want to spend more time in my own head, getting to know myself, getting to explore my own thoughts and psyche, experiencing real time.. But with a massive distraction like Facebook, I am continuously drawn outside of my own mind. I am bombarded with new and often personally irrelevant information that I can be so fascinated and obsessed with, that I will sit for hours reading about things that I will never actually utilize in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming Facebook for my love of learning (at least for entertainment value), but I have come to realize the extent to which I am simply distracting myself. Like watching MTV (or even the History channel) I am just spending my mental energy observing others as they produce, instead of digging deep into my own mental resources and producing something of my own. I have always kept up my creative writing as a hobby. But I am realizing how many books I could have written by now if I had spent anywhere NEAR the amount of time writing that I do on facebook.

I think I'm going to take a hiatus. I have said I would before, but I've never done it for any significant amount of time. I am still not sure how long I will do it for (something I will figure out before I start, so I have a clear goal). Perhaps it will be based on completing a work of some sort (screenplay, book, etc.) instead of a time frame. Maybe a good combination of both. I have a sneaky suspicion that after a month or two of not using it, I won't even have an interest in using it. I have given up a few other things in my life recently (smoking, drinking, etc), and I feel that this will be one of the more difficult ones for me, but perhaps one of the more significant ones, in terms of becoming a new/better person. Information is like a drug to my mind, and I need to break the cycle.

I have been second guessing this inkling that I should "log off" for a while, mostly because it makes me feel weak to have to go to such extremes to manage control over my compulsions, but habits are hard to break. They say that it takes at least as long to break a habit as it does to establish one, and I've been an FB'er for about 5 years.... ;)

I just need a healthy routine. I need to kick my laptop out of my bed, and sleep. I need to wake up in to morning and not roll over to log on. Even though I am fairly productive (okay, maybe not this past week) during the day, I feel like I waste my 'me' time doing absolutely nothing. I am pretty sure that the development of digital interfacing will soon be considered an essential part of being human. Perhaps in my lifetime, we will become what sci-fi has termed "Cyborgs". But I want to have a solid foundation in my biology before I make that step, and an essential part of that is being able to control my thoughts and actions, not simply to veg out and go with the flow.

I will probably be redirecting much of my time toward writing, so you may even see an increase of activity on my blog.

Thanks for reading.