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Back at last
Wow, 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?
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And the thing is, I do feel like a slave to it, because even if I don't feel like checking my flist, I feel obligated to as if anyone will notice or care if I don't comment or post for a week. Or month. Or, you know, ever. :-)
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You can get programs that kick you off after a certain time, or whitepage programs that restrict you to a very short list of websites, but they require discipline not to disable them, and I've never gotten them to work. Just going offline by switching off the modem can work. There's also some software out there like WriteRoom which force you to only use one plain window for writing etc.
But I think having a kid pester you for a promised game gives you an hour or two sans-child and sans-=computer, the two biggest brain-sucks ever invented. Both awesome, but also designed to destroy attention spans at all costs.
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On the other hand, since I restrict her screen time, she'd probably be a good ally in attempting to restrict my own; she'd understand what I was getting at.
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Just back from a road trip, yesterday, and yes, I find I have the exact same experience. I spent a week without the computer, interacting with people face-to-face and moving around, and... I feel like I'm physically (but not necessarily emotionally) depressed in my "normal" life, sluggish, and like you said: anesthetized.
I don't want that. I want to live and feel and see and celebrate having a body while it's working properly. Which makes me want to chuck my computer in a pond.
But I also don't want to lose touch with, for example, you.
Have compromised by filtering my flist down to people I actually care about. But I also remember how damn easy it is to just fall into a cyber existence. So I don't know how that's going to work.
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Cutting down the flist is a good start. But -- I don't know if it's this way for you, but for me, at certain times of day, if I don't have anything I want to look at, I can spend an hour clicking around at random, looking at things, and they're boring me, and I know it, but I can't stop!
Hm -- maybe it's not so much at certain times of day but more after a certain amount of time on the computer. Like, the first hour can actually be either useful or pleasurable, but after that, I'm just clicking randomly. (The spouse says, "I hate this. It's neither work nor rest.")
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I lasted until 10:30.
Maybe tomorrow I will make it until noon?
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My biggest problem, though, is that I'd like to be able to be using the computer for real things (for work, for writing) without being distracted by playing games with the kidlet's Webkinz account for hours on end.
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And then I realised that, oh yeah, I have paper and a pen, and books and... but it didn't feel right. Doesn't help that I don't have a tv or a stereo, so it was *really* quiet.
For the time limiting thing - maybe set yourself a number of hours to use it before something else, so you aren't tempted to keep going? Like, three hours on the computer before dinner or something, so you have to stop for dinner. Or giving the power cable to someone else so you can't turn it on?!?
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Downside - can't post AND read all of f-list, so miss stuff fairly regularly. Can't follow all posts back and forward on metafandom. Can't keep up with all forums, so some days I don't read my flist at all, 'cos I'm on photography or cycling forums instead.
Upside - healthy meals, enough sleep, gardening, exercise, visiting friends, clean and tidy house, reading novels, photography, projects conceived, started and finished, planning for the future, etc.
In short, the time I have bought back from the internet has reduced the overall level of stress in my life by huge amounts.
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It is really amazing, though, how much you can squeeze into a nonvirtual hour, when an hour on the computer will only get you e-mail, LJ, and maybe a comic or two.
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Then there are completely offline days. Most of the time I don't plan them in advance, but sometimes I just need to take one for my sanity. I just... don't open the computer, and enjoy reading an actual book or taking a nap or something in the time I would otherwise waste online. In fact, I sometimes take a whole day (usually a weekend one, obviously) where I don't speak to another human being at all if I can help it--I need the solitude and silence to recharge. Not as easy to do if you live with your family, of course, but I recommend it for everyone once in a while--I guess that's what retreats are for. I'm not sure if I necessarily come up with solutions to my life problems during that time, but it keeps me from going too crazy.
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It's a good idea to actually put some walls between you and the computer -- I get a lot done when I'm in the coffee shop and the computer is at home. (Or en route to and from Apple, as it was all last week.)
When you sit down at the computer to do actual work, do you find it difficult to do the work and leave the toys alone? I wonder if maybe I just have less self-discipline than most people. I'm not distracted from work by nonvirtual toys -- I'm perfectly capable of sitting in a chair and writing while a book sits on the table beside me -- but somehow the virtual kind are much harder to ignore and/or easy to deceive myself about.
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One thing I tried with moderate success was to give myself interweb in hour-long slots, and then make myself do something else (ideally something physical) for an hour.
And re using computer without being lured by interwebs ... I bought myself a basic laptop without an internal modem, second-hand, and wrote most of the last novel in NoteTab on that. The investment definitely paid off. (This was before I had wireless, so there were rooms in the house where I couldn't have got online even with a modem. Now not even the garden is safe space. :))
I really enjoyed a week without interweb when I was lounging by a pool in a hot sunny country. A weekend without interweb when I was huddled indoors in country-of-residence didn't have the same effect at all.
Immersing myself in fanfic, I forget how to read anything as long and complex as a Real Novel (and some of the fic I read is novel-length, but, y'know, qualitatively different). It's life by drip.
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You can get a Mac-compatible AlphaSmart for $30. I'm seriously considering it.
Life by drip -- I like that. And even if I'm reading something online that's comparable to a novel, I'm not reading it the way I'm reading a novel. There are all these other windows, see.
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About two years ago I decided not to have an internet connection at home. I generally go to either school or the public library for net access at least once every two days, and usually every day, so I'm not cut off entirely. But at home, I can focus on reading and writing and cooking and, you know, *sleeping*. (I've gotten consistently way more sleep as a result of this decision; I used to just stay up chatting and clicking until 2 or 3 am on a regular basis. Now I usually go to bed between 10 and midnight, depending on when I got up.)
The first few days, or maybe even weeks, were pretty awful. I felt disoriented and disconnected and like IMPORTANT STUFF WAS HAPPENING AND I WASN'T THERE. But rather soon this wore off. About once a month or so, I have something I really, really wish the internet was there for, but I've generally been able to solve the problem the old-fashioned way (look it up in the dictionary; call my mom) or just wait for an answer until the next day. (I generally keep a running list of things to do on the internet so I don't forget to look up whatever it was.)
So, if you and your husband both have easy access at work, I'd say -- just delete the net. The kid will be fine. :)
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I've generally been able to solve the problem the old-fashioned way (look it up in the dictionary; call my mom)
My mom was google before google existed! Was everyone's? Maybe I should start a new search engine called "Mom", and when answers pop up, the link descriptions will all start: "My Mama Says:"
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I have so many tedious things that need doing, so to avoid that I use the computer. Unfortunately, my list of things I'm avoiding has expanded greatly. I do use it less on the weekends, when everyone is home. But I can't NOT use it, because my classes are on-line. Vicious circle.
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Wow, I've never been anyone's imaginary friend before - it made me surprisingly misty-eyed (but in a good way!)
Computers are time alligators.
Computers are money alligators.
Computers are life alligators.
Well, at least we're all being chomped together!
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As far as you know. [dramatic music here]
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Ugh, too familiar to me, too. I've been dealing with a lot of the crazy in my life in the past year, so it's really, really too familiar.
I browse in Firefox, which has a small clock extension-thingy you can download for free. It sits in the bottom right corner of the browser window, and keeps track of how long you're using the browser (it stops when you minimize the browser window or otherwise focus on something else, so it's capabilities do have limits). That's helped me figure out exactly how much of a timesuck the internets are on any given day, and try to limit myself. It can be tough, since I'm a distance ed student, and I use the computer for legitimate school-related purposes (I'm just reading fanfic in between the researching).
Frankly, I'm considering instituting a system of bribery. No more than X amount of gratuitous computer use, or I lose X privilege (or cannot have Y reward). If it worked for Pavlov, it can work for me!
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This sounds totally helpful, and I'm off to look it up. You don't happen to remember the name of the extension, do you?
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If it helps, your post did inspire me to get offline, spend two hours reading The New Yorker and, okay, take a long nap, which I tell myself was much better for my eyes than staring at the screen. It really is an odd adjustment: reading on paper vs. reading on a screen. It does affect my brain in different ways. This is why I do most of my research/dissertation writing in longhand!
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Yes, exactly! And I'm quite capable of feeling as though I've had a productive afternoon on the computer, only to think back and realize that I've read eight comic strips, two columns, I Can Has Cheezburger, and all four of my LJ filters, plus playing four computer games.
When I worked at the magazine, I'd print my notes and go sit on the couch in the hallway to write my articles in longhand. I used to be able to compose onscreen -- but that was in the days when "onscreen" was just a blinking cursor, not the entire Internets.
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my experience is, once I start on the computer, time goes and goes, and there's not much I can do about that. so I don't manage when I stop, I manage when I *start* - not in the morning until I am dressed, fed, ready for work (usually means I don't get on at all in the mornings) and not in the evening until after dinner (which is pretty late in my house).
on weekends, only having computer after doing something else helps - after reading some book, after doing some gardening, after finishing housework. (she says, in bed with laptop at 10am - but i wasn't on the computer at all yesterday!)
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Good thought -- I'll definitely try that.
But I wish I could manage when I stop -- not even to stop when I have something urgent to do, so much as to stop when I'm bored and not having fun any more. You wouldn't think that would be so difficult!
I know people who have chat on at work. I don't get that. I'd never get anything done at all.
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However, right now I need anaesthetising, and I'm not giving it up. Everyone needs a little braincandy now and then. By which I mean "daily". :D
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How does it work for you?
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welcome home
Re: welcome home
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