Digital Dilemma

It's obvious that I haven't posted in a while. Why, you wonder? Well, several reasons, actually. The semester has begun, I have four preps including one new class, and I'm a little stressed. But those are not the main reasons. Actually, I'm having a digital dilemma.

Facebook. Twitter. Blogs. Text Messages. The Internet . . . . All of them were vying for my attention, and I noticed that I wasn't always really in control of how much time I spent online. I'd get on to check Facebook, and before I knew it half an hour was gone. One blog would lead to another, one website to another, and before I knew it another half hour was gone. It was as if I were giving away little bits of my life without consciously making the decision that those activities were worth the sacrifice of time. Also, something's gotta be wrong when you start evaluating every life experience in terms of whether it'll make a great tweet or a cryptic status update.

Additionally, I began to feel a low-level of stress (the kind with physical symptoms) that I believe was a result of being constantly "in touch." There were always badges telling me I had messages or that someone had posted on my wall or that someone else wanted to follow me on Twitter. Even when I didn't want to check my iphone I felt compelled to. Compelled. Isn't that a characteristic of addiction?

So, I've backed off. I leave my iphone in my purse. On the weekends I turn off alerts and avoid my laptop. At first, it was hard, and it embarasses me to say that. But now, it's much easier. I forget about being connected for hours at a time. I feel better both physically and mentally, and I get a lot more done.

I haven't decided yet how dis-connected I want to be, ultimately. I have a community of online friends that I enjoy, but I also have a life that I want to live authentically and with purpose. I'm in the process of figuring it all out. Comments and suggestions would be most welcome.

Bye, Bye BlackBerry

A little over a week ago I upgraded from a BlackBerry to an iPhone. Of course, I love my new iPhone. With all those great apps, it's just plain fun to use. But that's not the main reason I'm liking it so much better than my BlackBerry. It has to do, you see, with that little red blinking light.

With the BlackBerry, every time I'd get a message--text or email--that little red light would start blinking. And, of course, I'd feel compelled to check it. That red light was a tyrant. The really bad thing was that it blinked for every message. You couldn't set it to distinguish between a text message (which I did want to know about because it was usually from my husband or kids) and an email (which I didn't always want to be alerted of, especially because a lot of emails on my HU account were "colleagues" emails which often had nothing to do with me, at least not in any immediate sense, or because I didn't always want to handle student emails on my off time but after having read them I couldn't quit thinking about them; and emails received through my yahoo account were mostly things I didn't want to have to sort through in my work account, like confirmations of orders or newsletters, i.e. nothing I needed to be "notified" about).

Now, on my iPhone, I'm still alerted when I have a text message; however, although I have ready access to my email accounts, there is no immediate alert. I forget about my email for hours at a time and check it only when I feel like it. In my quest for simplification, I'd thought of doing away with mobile email access, just because of the control it seemed to exert over me and the subsequent rise in stress level, but I hesitated to do so because having immediate access to email has often saved me a lot of time and trouble.

iPhone to the rescue . . .