Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Getting caught in the world wide web.

Sunday, July 3, 2005
7:52 p.m.
Outside today was splendiferous. Inside it was computational. That�s all I�ve been doing, except for the washing and hanging out of two separate loads of laundry and the making of supper, recopying this dang-blasted score. Okay, that�s not entirely true. I also had a bath, a long, hot, bubble bath because for some reason that totally eludes me, I woke up just after 6 o�clock this morning, not a coming-slowly-out-of-unconsciousness kind of waking up, but a slam bang �I�m awake!� rousing where my eyes flew open and I was suddenly aware of everything around me and my mind started racing again with all the various things that have been filling it up lately. Not only that, but I couldn�t fall asleep again (although I must have because I did get up two hours later and I couldn�t have been lying awake that whole time) and I was cold, so when I eventually did rise I had a kink between my shoulder blades which the hot bath helped somewhat to ease.

One of the things that was on my mind was that I realize that I spend entirely too much time on the fun computer and not enough on the one where I�m supposed to be working. This has very little to do with my activities here at DiaryIand, reading diaries, posting entries and leaving notes for my buddies. It has alot to do with the DiaryIand chatroom where I can lose myself for hours at a time, and with my various contacts on my MSN and Yah00 messenger lists, people with whom I would rather be chatting than earning my bread and butter. Many of the things I used to do, such as reading, gardening, sewing and certain forms of physical exercise, have been totally neglected because I have been chatting online instead of engaging in those activities. My excuse has been that I�ve been busy with the copying, but in reality, I would have been finished that a long time ago if I weren�t so sucked in by the vortex created by the internet.

I don�t entirely know what to do about this. I don�t want to stop talking to my online friends. Some of them have become very important to me. But, as it has been pointed out by one concerned member of my family, I spend more time talking to invisible people than I do to them. This is true. Even I have noticed this myself and commented on it to one of my friends, the one I seem to spend the most time with. I think what I have to do is just back off. Chat more rarely. There will be more and more interesting things to actually talk about if the meetings are farther apart. I can still blow off steam in the chatroom, but must limit the time I visit there. This will be so hard. But I think it is really necessary, for my own sanity, for my work, and for my family�s happiness. After all, they are number one. I should remember to put them first more often.

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