Thursday, September 20, 2007

Addictions

Had a pretty busy day yesterday. Work was fairly steady all day and I did some running around afterwards that put it around 7:00 before I got home last night. Not late by normal standards but for us hermits that might as well have been midnight. It's good for me though and helps break up my afternoon routine during the week.

When I did get home I decided not to turn on the computer. At all. If getting home at 7:00 was enough to disrupt my schedule, having no internet crashed my entire world. I know I'm addicted to being online, but you never really know how strong an Addiction is until you go cold turkey. I found myself having the same kinds of thoughts and anxieties as I did when I quit smoking cigarettes. Granted they were nowhere near as intense as the nicotine jitters, but it was a little disturbing to have them nonetheless.

It was pretty interesting once I realized what was going on though. The Addicted part of my mind kept trying to trick me into breaking...surely I could just log in long enough to check my email and nothing else, or I could come here and blog for a few minutes and then walk away, and the patented stand-by argument I use for everything: why am I doing this today; try this cold turkey thing tomorrow instead. I knew how to shut that part of the Addiction down since I've gone through it with nicotine but it was still a persistent little presence that kept popping into my head all evening.

Instead, I watched TV all night. Not much of an improvement since I basically replaced a computer screen with a television screen but it's at least a step in the right direction. I know I'm not going to be able to completely get away from being online (and I wasn't trying to by disconnecting last night) but I've got to learn to take it in smaller doses and stop letting it be where I spend the majority of my time. If I really want to re-join society and take command of my life I've got to control this.

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