I Am Connected, Therefore I am

Once upon a time, back in the dark ages, everyone didn’t walk around with their own personal phone.  They used this dinosaur of an invention called a pay phone.  No, no- PAY PHONE.  Not: pay as you go cellular phone.  You paid 10, then 25, and then 35 cents and stood in a little booth to make a call.  I know grasshoppah, the times have changed.

I was one of the few that held out getting a cell phone.  I simply didn’t want to be that accessible.  I thought I was really cool when I finally got one, text messaging and all that, you know, because I had bought the thing with the intention of using it for emergencies only.  It didn’t take long for the emergency to become where everyone was meeting for cocktails.

I started chatting online, because clearly, I was not connected enough through my cell phone.   I started to keep in touch with Myspace, uploading pictures, creating profiles and picking music.  That morphed into Facebook, which I spend more time fooling aimlessly around on than I care to admit to.  And now I have made the jump to Twitter, for some God forsaken reason, because I don’t screw around on the computer enough it seems.

Don’t get me wrong here.  I love the internet and all of the ways I am able to keep in contact with friends and family.  It has provided me with a quick and easy way to stay connected while I live overseas.  I would have lost many of the people on my friends list without these platforms.  The problem, I’m finding, is that I fuck around online way too much.  Instead of doing that Pilates or Yoga I check my Facebook.  Instead of writing and being somewhat productive I browse the celebrity tabloids or try and understand why Twitter is cool.  (I’m am so far unimpressed with Twitter.)  Instead of going to IKEA or studying my German I double check my email and see who is available to chat.

OK, you’re right.  Who really needs to go to IKEA?  But the point being is that I have found 50 ways to avoid all those little tasks I really should be taking care of, and the beauty of it is that it’s all disguised as communication!