Back at last
Apr. 19th, 2008 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantWow, that was a long time to go without a computer. My laptop has a new logicboard, and they've added some stiffening to the keyboard half, so it feels subtly different. If I ever had my doubts about whether AppleCare was worth the money, I am now convinced.
I'm so very happy to be in touch with my imaginary friends again!
This period of computerlessness convinced me of some unsettling things about the computer, though:
- It has trained me to have a short attention span. On the computer, I rarely do one thing for any extended period of time. I'm composing an e-mail and reading my flist and playing a game, switching from window to window every thirty seconds.
When I sit down to read a book, it always takes me a while to reset my internal clock and not be looking up every page.
- Without meaning to, I'm anesthetizing myself with it. As long as I have a computer, I never have to sit and think about anything. I can use it to spend hours without ever putting two thoughts together; there's always a new thought to knock the old thought out of my head.
We've been facing some life-phase problems -- career changes for us, the kidlet needing something different from school, the desire to move to another town -- and mostly the problems have just been sitting there. But I handed my computer to Rod the Mac guy, and within 24 hours, I had a temporary solution to the school problem, a way to visualize the next three years in both our professional lives, and a plan to solve some of our financial problems. It was like my brain had gone to sleep and was just waking up.
You will notice, however, that I'm discussing this on the computer.
I don't have any solutions, but it's becoming obvious to me that I need to do something to create a proper place for the computer in my life -- to figure out a way to be able to use it as a tool when it's the best tool for the job, and to use it for fun, without giving it hours and hours of my time every day or allowing myself to train my brain into bad habits with it.
I don't suppose any of y'all have come up with a method that works?
I'm so very happy to be in touch with my imaginary friends again!
This period of computerlessness convinced me of some unsettling things about the computer, though:
- It has trained me to have a short attention span. On the computer, I rarely do one thing for any extended period of time. I'm composing an e-mail and reading my flist and playing a game, switching from window to window every thirty seconds.
When I sit down to read a book, it always takes me a while to reset my internal clock and not be looking up every page.
- Without meaning to, I'm anesthetizing myself with it. As long as I have a computer, I never have to sit and think about anything. I can use it to spend hours without ever putting two thoughts together; there's always a new thought to knock the old thought out of my head.
We've been facing some life-phase problems -- career changes for us, the kidlet needing something different from school, the desire to move to another town -- and mostly the problems have just been sitting there. But I handed my computer to Rod the Mac guy, and within 24 hours, I had a temporary solution to the school problem, a way to visualize the next three years in both our professional lives, and a plan to solve some of our financial problems. It was like my brain had gone to sleep and was just waking up.
You will notice, however, that I'm discussing this on the computer.
I don't have any solutions, but it's becoming obvious to me that I need to do something to create a proper place for the computer in my life -- to figure out a way to be able to use it as a tool when it's the best tool for the job, and to use it for fun, without giving it hours and hours of my time every day or allowing myself to train my brain into bad habits with it.
I don't suppose any of y'all have come up with a method that works?