When I first became iAssimilated, I kept playing with the idea of walking away from this blog forever by changing my log-in password to some string of characters I could possibly never remember, than logging out for good.
One of the reasons I was flirting with this idea was a post I read by Roosh around that time:
Are You Addicted To The Internet?
The best way to know if you have an internet addiction is to imagine how difficult it would be for you to limit social networking, email, and smartphone usage. The harder it is, the more likely you have a problem of using the internet not as an informational tool but as a distractor and mood regulator of life.
I used to think that the internet was better than television in that it offered more mental rewards, but with the direction it has taken in the past 10 years, especially with the development of smartphone apps, I can no longer say that sharing or viewing items on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and then checking obsessively for replies is better than watching a television comedy show. Both require the lowest of brain function, but at least in the comedy you can encounter a joke to use on your friends to make them laugh. If you look at the faces of people who are on their smartphones, mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, you’ll see that it’s as empty and hollow as those watching television.
If your approach to the internet is balanced, your usage should decrease as you start to solve the problems in your life. If you are reading blogs for game advice, and your game starts getting sharper, you should be reading less game blogs. If you understand the damage that a certain ideology is doing on society, like feminism, you should be reading less articles about feminism as time goes on. Only when you establish a new goal, such as studying a language, should your internet usage temporarily rise to aid you. But to constantly use it every day, regardless of what knowledge you already have on certain topics, what information you immediately need, or what your future goals are, means you are treating the internet not as a tool, but as a lifestyle, trading it in for real life instead.
Most of the population is not going to exhibit control in their internet usage by only reading select resources while not attention whoring on social networking, so it appears that we may have arrived at the point where, for the average person, the internet will cause them greater harm than being a couch potato. It’s time we all be more thoughtful about how we incorporate the internet into our daily routines, and make sure it doesn’t take over our lives completely.
When I first read that post, it was one of the few readings I had done in the past year or so that I continually ruminated on for days afterwards. It made me take a good, long look at how my usage of the internet and all of the things I could have accomplished or done with my time instead.
Worse, I had found myself becoming one of those Palm Zombies I've blogged about in the past, whenever I found a free Wi-Fi access hot spot for my iPhone.
Roosh was right, I was treating the internet not as a tool, but as a lifestyle, trading it in for real life instead.
Much of the topics of this blog and my participation in the MAndrosphere where some of the greatest tools I have ever used to enhance and improve my life in our current Brave New World Order's globalized feedlot society. I mostly got myself out of usurious debt slavery, improved my health, developed a zeal for practicing the culinary arts, improved my physical endurance, stamina and discipline, and gained a greater understanding of just what is most important in this life and what it really means to be a Father and not just a hapless, pack mule provider.
But I seem to have reached a point of maximized utility here, and much of the things I've been reading on teh Interwebz seems to be retreads and rehashes of all the topics I was reading and writing about 4 years ago. It all seems like re-runs now...yet I couldn't stop from logging on and frittering away hours on end reading and composing new blog posts on comments on other folk's blogs, day after day.
Roosh's article gave me a moment of clarity and I knew something had to change. So I contemplated blogger-cide. I came close several times, but I just couldn't do it...but it did result in a two month hiatus from any posting. Since I decided to not give up my access to this blog, I have been very careful to not get sucked back into a daily habit of using the internet as a lifestyle rather than a tool.
There's too many things I got to do in the real world to spend so much time in the virtual world.
Here in Hawaii, the summer sun is shining and the weather is sweet. I got a lot of outdoor projects going on, and a lot of work keeping me busy to fund those projects, not to mention regularly scheduled sessions for paleo radiation therapy. I'll probably resume posting more frequently when the days are shorter and the rainy seasons return. But until then, the days are too beautiful here to waste them typing on a keyboard and peering at a screen.
But I do recognize that I do have a need to read and write. The muse does strike me strongly every now and then - not as much as when I was a desk jockey in a cubicle farm, logged on and plugged in to teh Interwebz eight hours a day, five days a week - but it still comes. When it does, I will let it ride. I have a few unfinished posts in the que that I will eventually get around to finishing and posting, but as of right now, I've been really satisfied with what I've been able to accomplish and experience these past several months by severely curtailing my internet usage and blogging.
If your new to these fringes of teh Interwebz, welcome, you found the greatest potential tool for improving your personal situation whether it be health, your personal and familial relationships or understanding the way the world really works and how to avoid many of the insidious traps "society" has laid for us all.
Just remember that as useful and helpful you find truth seeking in the virtual world, you must be vigilant and not let it take place of your life in the real world. Teh Interwebz seems to be addictive by design. Don't fall for it and succumb to the virtual disconnect.
A hui hou.