{"id":2008,"date":"2009-04-20T07:35:51","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T12:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=2008"},"modified":"2009-04-20T07:35:51","modified_gmt":"2009-04-20T12:35:51","slug":"who-me-addicted-to-the-what-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2009\/04\/20\/who-me-addicted-to-the-what-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Who, me? Addicted to the what now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my friends at work (*waves to Sue*) recently sent me a link to an article entitled “Why moms are at risk for Internet addiction<\/a>.” <\/p>\n

I have no idea why she sent it to me. (*looks obliquely to the left*) No really, I don’t have a problem. I mean, it did give me an uncomfortable little squiggle there for a minute with the bit about “14 percent of Internet users find it hard to stay away from it for several days at a time” (days? really? try ‘hours’!) and maybe that part about “9 percent try to hide their “nonessential Internet use” from their loved ones” has happened once or twice. (*begins to sweat*) And hey, that part about “that going online has become an imposing part of your life, which, at the least, means a load or two of laundry goes unwashed” — well, sure, but I always get to it eventually<\/em>. <\/p>\n

Oh hell, there’s no use fighting it. (*deep breath*)<\/p>\n

My name is DaniGirl, and I am addicted to the Internet.<\/p>\n

Funny, though, I don’t get online to escape my problems per se<\/em>. It’s not an emotional escape for me, it’s often a physical one. When I’m at home sometimes I go online just because it means I can sit still and zone out for a couple of minutes. There’s something cathartic bordering on zen in the familiar circuit of checking the blog for new comments, checking the e-mail account for new messages, taking a quick peek on Flickr to see if anything is new there (that’s a new stop on my route, but sometimes lately the first place I’ll go depending on how much I love my photo of the day) and if there’s time I’ll stop by Twitter to see what’s going on there. Five minutes, tops, and I’ve had the chance to sit, breath and regroup. The hard part, of course, is not getting sucked in. “Oh look, @wombat627 thinks this video on YouTube is classic retro 80s. I’ll just take a peek.” And it spirals downhill from there, one click at a time.<\/p>\n

The path to hell is not paved with good intentions but with clickable links and idle curiousity.<\/p>\n

In all seriousness, there are <\/em>days when I think my Internet love affair gets a little bit out of control. I could never quantify the amount of effort I’ve put into creating my little online universe, just as I could never quanify the richness it has brought to my life. But holy hell, it’s almost as much work keeping my online life in order as it is keeping my real life from falling apart!<\/p>\n

Beyond simply writing the posts and creating the pictures, it’s amazing how much effort it is to nurture and cultivate the relationships that give this little corner of the Internet the sense of community that I so treasure. Once upon a time, I visited the blog of every single person who commented and tried to leave a comment in return, and I responded to almost all of my e-mails. If I did that today, I’d be online 37 hours a day! Like everything else in my life, I try to cycle through my online to-do list once every week or two, focusing on certain tasks and leaving others undone. <\/p>\n

I’m terrible now at responding to e-mails, even though I read every single one. I don’t comment nearly as much as I used to, even though I’m still reading the same number of blogs. I can’t remember the last time I opened Facebook, and I have about 100 more people following me on Twitter than I follow, largely because I haven’t had the chance to peek at their profiles and see who they are — and even then I’m not sure why I’m following half the people I am. I’d love to be spending even more time online catching up with all this stuff, but I have this whole real life on the outside of the computer that seems to demand the lion’s share of my attention!<\/p>\n

All in all, I suppose my online habit is rather benign, considering it’s better for my health than smack and better for my wallet than being addicted to shopping. What do you think? Are you a junkie like me, or do you have your Internet compulsions more firmly under control?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my friends at work (*waves to Sue*) recently sent me a link to an article entitled “Why moms are at risk for Internet addiction.” I have no idea why she sent it to me. (*looks obliquely to the left*) No really, I don’t have a problem. I mean, it did give me an … Continue reading “Who, me? Addicted to the what now?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-i-love-the-interwebs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2009,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions\/2009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}