Addicted to...?

I’ve gotten a little addicted to technology lately, I think. Or maybe it’s an addiction to “connection.” If you know me, you know this isn’t unusual. I love being obsessive and haven’t much of a yen for balance. I haven’t got it now.

My addiction got me thinking about the two light-hearted movies that portray writing though: “Julia & Julia,” and “You’ve Got Mail.” I loved those scenes in “Mail” where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan jump up, as soon as their partners leave the premises, look around, tiptoe, and then almost dance to the computer. And I loved almost as much the portrayal in “Julia” of when the writing project the young Julia has set for herself, her thrill at the response, and her compulsion to post daily, get her a little goofy and in hot water with her partner.

I subscribed to a blog a while ago. The woman who wrote it had left a comment on mine and was just starting hers. She had kids and was caring for her mother and writing, in a funny way, about “the sandwich generation.” After about a half dozen posts…the first close together…the latter more widely space, she was gone. I didn’t really wonder too much about it. Her theme made the likelihood of her keeping up with the thing pretty unlikely.

There was another one, the postings of a long-distance friend that was more of an interactive blog, with group members who responded regularly. I’d taken part in it sporadically for maybe a year before I started seeing the postings arrive and thinking “I’ll look at that later,” and then never getting back to them. After a while of that I quit getting them and figured I’d been kicked out for lack of responsiveness. I felt a little guilty.

Then I heard from my friend the other day. He was apologizing for his six-month absence. I wrote him and said, “I bet there’s a story behind that.” So he wrote me of financial difficulties and working two jobs for a while, and just not having the time to write.

In my own case, I started my new website for The Given Self (http://www.thegivenself.com) with a Guest Page on it and a forum that I never did get to work. After about a month I had two “good luck” sort of posts on the Guest Page and decided to get rid of the thing. The forum went the way of those good ideas that only seem like good ideas for a day or two.

I can’t say that any of this has kept me from wondering if there’s a way to make this technology “work” for some purpose, but every time I get to feeling tied to it, I get the desire to run in the other direction, and I get a sense that more and more people are feeling this way – not wanting to commit or feel obligated even it we only obligate ourselves (when there’s no need to at all). Who cares if I post on this blog once a week or several times, or not at all? Who’d read them if they felt like they had to, or had to reply if they did? I’m still startled each time someone mentions them and I remember that they are being read here and there.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, really, because I started out to say I’m going to take a little break, and then that had a feeling of arbitrariness and assumption that I didn’t want to make. I guess I’ve just discovered that I haven’t been hanging too loose with technology lately and that the only person making me uptight is me.