Although I do enjoy spending time online, when I spend far too much time it makes me feel numb. I don’t know what it is, maybe information overload, but there is something desensitizing about the Internet. Of course there are texts, articles and talks that enrich, entertain or provoke us in some manner, where their content stays and grows with us for weeks. However, while reading them it’s really easy to click on those other links that just take up time. I notice that the more I stay online, the more my body and my spirit suffers and I suspect that it’s partially because of this ‘extra’ time of mine that I allow the Internet to rob me of… the time that makes me more detached than it makes me feel connected.
Someone told me once that a good start for regaining balance is to say to yourself ‘I am here’. I am here [breathe]. I am here [look around]. I am here [notice how you feel]. I am here [notice your body]. I am here… Who am I? Where am I going? What have I stopped doing? What am I looking for?
‘I am here’ is for many a start of a prayer or meditation. It allows us to take stock of our physical and metaphysical reality. It brings us back to our homes and personal realities that the Internet so eagerly detaches us from.
I am here, writing these words for you while I contemplate the future of this blog, of its value to you, to me and to my family. Part of me feels that the “I am” in “I am here” wouldn’t be me without writing and photographing… but I also wonder who I would be or become if the time that I spend on writing and documenting life would be spent on other things? I guess that my house would be cleaner… or maybe it wouldn’t.
I know my house wouldn’t be cleaner!! I can relate…I get mushy brained from yo much internet myself.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s much more interesting to engage with the world than with dust! :)
LikeLike
Agreed, the Internet is such a time and brain suck. I like to think I would be more productive without it, but I know I was still a procrastinator before the days of Facebook!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, it’s so easy to blame the Internet but it is really in our nature to procrastinate. :)
LikeLike
I’m the same with my photography. I create a rod for my own back by taking so many photos that I have to do something with – catalogue, publish, share etc. But without my camera I just feel lost. And sometimes I feel that if I didn’t spend so much time having to work on them I’d have more time to go out and take photos. It’s a crazy merry-go-round!
LikeLike
haha… so true!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can relate too, to blog or not to blog…I think it is a matter of balance. I still am working on that..
LikeLike
I’m with you.
LikeLiked by 1 person