In saying this, I find that now, that I am banned from Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and any other social network from which I might obtain my "fix" I am remembering that I do indeed have blogs. Hmmm, now the problem becomes....what do I blog about. I don't have anything important to say. Nothing of interest to anyone but myself....and maybe a few others. I'm no one special...okay that's not entirely true...I'm freaking AWESOME if you get to know me. Okay, enough of that, my conceit does have its bounds. Why am I banned from social networks you ask? Well because I am a fool and decided to do John Mayer's digital cleanse. (jhnmyr.tumblr.com for details)
I'm a huge twitter whore...I admit it. I'm also a GINORMOUS music fan. I follow my favorite artists on twitter and John Mayer happens to be one of them. He's amazingly funny and irreverant--two things I absolutely love about him. If you don't follow him...go do it now. You WON'T regret it, I promise. Anyway, a week or so before New Year's John put out the idea of a digital cleanse. You know this is true, He had observed in his own life how much of his time was devoted to relationships/connections via the web. Our society has replaced actual connections to real human beings with virtual relationships with what we hope are real humans via the internet through social networks such as TWITTER, Facebook and Myspace, to name the most prevalent. We've become complacent in our humanness by allowing ourselves to live through these electronic proxies. In order to force himself OUT of this complacency, John Mayer put forth this idea of doing a "digital cleansing" by abstaining from all forms of social networking. Its so much a part of our mainstream and our lifestyles that its actually seemed a daunting task. The idea is to not visit, post, or even READ sites such as twitter, facebook, myspace, tabloid sites....and even NOT texting. If we MUST connect with someone we should do it face to face or at least person to person. If we MUST email, then it should be done from an actual computer/laptop. Our phones should only be used as they were intended, to SPEAK to our friends, families, and associates.
The idea of course was ridiculously simple yet scary. I know I'm a slave to technology and I knew that I would inevitably be faced with the choice to give in and embrace my social retardedness or fight my own compulsion and complete the cleanse. I know I'm weak but I also didn't realize the scope of my addiction to the web. Its day 2 of the Cleanse...and I find that I'm at a loss as to what to do. My first thought as I wake in the morning is "What did I miss on Twitter?" Facebook isn't as much of an addiction as I thought it would be. Frankly I could absolutely do without it if not for my virtual fish in the Fishville app. I admit...I really LOVE my fish tank and I'm competitive as hell. I want to stay ahead of my friends who also use that app. But other than that, I could very easily give it up for a week...longer if necessary. As for myspace, I've all but given it up already. I only visit it maybe once a month if that often. Twitter has become like my crack. I wake up thinking twitter, I got to sleep thinking of it. It really is my crack. I hadn't realized it til this experiment. At first, I didn't want to do it, but I convinced myself that it would be a fun thing to try and I could just give in when it came to be too hard. Then I found out that my friends were placing bets on how long it would take for me to give up. My competitive nature of course screamed for me to prove to them I could last til the end. So here it is day 2, and I desperately want to tweet...but I refuse to give in so soon.
THUS, this blog is my distraction to keep me from throwing in the towel. So, when I'm feeling that uncontrollable urge to tweet or go to Facebook.....I will blog about the struggle. Hopefully this will work and keep me strong til the 8th of January when I will become a tweeting fool again.
or...maybe it will cure me of my obsession. Either way, expect to see more from me in the coming week. ;o) It may not make sense...but it will be interesting...and most definitely RANDOM. ;o)
