Internet "Holiday"

Is Anybody there?

After some Facebook braggadocio about my prowess negotiating the Internet with ADD, my friend Julie invited me to write about it.  Yah, ok.  I can do that.  I've given a lot of thought to what I call the Associative Mind and how I want to advocate for a little freedom to roam.  So why am I procrastinating?  I am NOT procrastinating.  I am allowing my mind to roam!  Jotting notes here and there.  Things knocking about in my mind, creating those collisions and connections that I value so much. Yet the sentences seem to be behind a dam somewhere, along with all the coherent advice I thought I had to offer.  Perhaps all those collisions are just a pile-up, and the idea is somewhere under the rubble.

I decided to do an Internet Fast  to clear my confusion.  As I signed off Facebook and email, I called it an Internet Holiday, but between you and me it sure felt more like a fast.  Binges, cravings, detox symptoms and re-entry trauma all made appearances.  Before beginning, I spent an evening indulging myself.  As you may have noticed from my metaphor, I'm a little obsessed with food lately.  Lifelong RA has led me to the raw food movement and all of its crazy warriors.  I indulge on the Web by clicking on links from links--supplements, videos, controversies, recipes, promises.  Mighty Raw Vegans battle it out with Mighty Paleo Hunters, each one claiming that we are meant to be what we used to be, that we're not cut out for civilized food.  It is interesting and even relevant to my thesis on evolution, but I am not sitting back taking notes.  No, I'm pushing forward, heart beating, looking for the next miracle, stroking it, trying to work myself into believing that this will be the answer.  They catch me with their promises.  I would love the clarity of purity, but unfortunately I know that life and even food is not so simple.  Clarity has to come from sorting, choosing, and integrating, not getting rid of the enemy.  Stepping back and looking at the big picture is the best way I know to begin the process.

From my diary the next day:

Right away I notice that when I don't respond to the frantic urge to escape [into the Web], I begin to relax and take things in…I actually hear birds, I see the sky changing color….aware of a desire for shopping…aware of restlessness when doing one thing at a time…aware of so many desires to check things--look up things.  I have to return to not knowing.  

On a break between patients, eating lunch but then feeling so disconnected, lonely, wishing I could check email and see that someone cares about me.  After sessions, again feeling so isolated, no hit of anything incoming, nothing from the outside.  Am I really done, or is there something someone wants from me that I don't know about?  

Astounded at how many desires I encounter--shopping, food, miracles...I realize too that the internet acts like community.  Like sometimes a substance will plug into a receptor but not actually be the substance so it blocks the action.  Like maybe how coffee is doing that to estrogen.  

By the end of the day, I am self-contained in a way that I wasn't before the fast, in charge of my attention instead the victim of distraction.  My evening seems calm and satisfying.  I sleep well, curious about what I missed but relieved that I didn't have to react to it.  

Re-entry is always so telling.  It's like coming back from vacation.  You vow to take it slow.  And then it starts with the mail, the voice messages, email and Facebook, and before you know it, you're crazy busy again, frantic, blah blah blah, ahh.  My goal as I re-entered was to be aware of what pulls me in, what makes me feel out of control.  I started with Reeder, noticing tension at the thought of all the things I could be reading, but wasn't.  Do I need cruising time?  Let's see what happens when I let go of controls.  

Overwhelmed.  What do I mean by that word?   Too much information.  A tightening in the stomach, brain lurching from thing to thing, trying to find focus.  Sometimes it grabs at the nearest thing, sometimes it rapidly convinces itself of the importance of this or that.  Often there is a sense of a need for completion.  This manifests as compulsive activity, but its goal is actually to clear the table, to finish.   That is the biggest trap of all.  We're trying to finish the whole damn internet.  It can't be done, so we buy those Gap panties on sale instead because it's doable, and also because now I need a treat because I feel so depleted.  Then afterwards I feel cheapened/lessened because certainly I am bigger than my panties.  Well, actually I am, but the point is that I need my bigger, wider mind.  

So I stop.  Actually, thankfully, I have somewhere to go.  I really don't advise this type of experiment without a firm time limit.   It takes quite a while for my mind/body to stop racing.  When it does, I recover perspective and devise my method.  ERRoR.   After you've read it and taken your break, hop over to Julie's excellent blog.

Update on Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 11:59AM by Elena Taurke

Comments:

alone together? Submitted by Marina Romani on Mon, 04/16/2012 - 21:57.

Interesting that you say we’re never actually alone. Maybe it does feel that way in the Internet age, at least as we ride its surface, in the some of the ways you discuss.

I usually feel that solitude is the fundamental existential condition of humans, and the social urge is at least in part a way to mask the loneliness, to escape from the terror that lurks inside that solitude. The tension between the two urges—toward solitude and toward community—is, I think, constant. There’s a delicate balance there, somewhere, and that “somewhere” may be the location that generates some of our most creative selves.

The Internet is presenting us with a whole new wave—maybe a storm—of urges and challenges that reflect that ancient struggle, and the discussion you’re having here is just the thing. I look forward to it going forward.

Checking email to see if someone cares, Submitted by Julie ( ) on Sun, 04/15/2012 - 22:12.

I notice the same thing about my internet use. I log on to see what's up with people I care about and whose lives interest me, but a lot of times, I just want to know, "Is someone reaching out for me?" I check Facebook, email, even Twitter, which I hardly use, and can feel disappointed if no one is. But then, I examine that. Before All This, we checked the mailbox, the answering machine (once we had those), we picked up the phone when it rang, but we didn't expect it all the day, throughout the day. The technology is training our hearts to want constant contact, frequent checking-in. Either we get it (yay!), but three-dimensional life retains all its challenges and pain, or, worse, we don't get this newly-evolved need met, and we feel disappointed. Is the need valid? I don't know. I do know that there was a time I did not feel it in this way.

OGRe Replies: Mon, 04/16/2012 - 17:27.

I appreciate the honesty in your response.  It is so important for us to acknowledge that it's not just teens who need hits of contact.  Almost all humans of every age need to connect.  However, I think we have to differentiate between the deep inner longing to connect and its various facsimiles.  As you say, "All This" teaches us to expect something "all the day."   What do we expect?  Maybe a little like or a little you're brilliant/wise/wonderful/funny or feel better soon,or maybe slightly different territory--a little I've been there.   I don't think it is possible to wipe out the desire, or even the expectation.  The expectation comes from training, and we are certainly being trained by our masters. 

It is possible, though, to cradle the desire without acting on it.  For me, sometimes it is a restlessness, sometimes a slight ache in my chest or gut.  As soon as I stop to notice it, the addictive aspect switches off and I'm aware of the deep longing that is the source of true connection.  Every time it happens, I'm shocked at the brevity of the pain.  I predicted it would be intolerable; that's why I kept checking incoming stimuli for 4 1/2 hours.  But when I finally stopped, the pain only lasted a few seconds, maybe even less.  

Before All This, we didn't have to decide to stop.  The phone only rang so often--our hundreds of 'friends' didn't call all day long.  So by default we had to develop the capacity to be alone, which to my mind absolutely requires the understanding that we are never actually alone.  Now, we have to decide to develop that capacity.  It's not at all easy, especially when advertisers and software developers prey on our need to belong.