That's-so-cool! syndrome

"In the long run, men only hit what they aim at." — Thoreau, Walden

Still January 6, 2009

The idea of leading one-month internet retreats—a weekly discussion and people would rely on each other, and check in once a week to see what they were learning, what it was like. Cool idea, don’t think I'd want to lead it. Too much else interesting to do.
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That’s So Cool syndrome — lots of stuff on the internet is cool — but do I need it, really?

For example:
Snow coming tomorrow. Habitually I would spend 20 minutes on the internet and computer, reading and re-reading the winter weather advisory or storm watch / warning gleaning as much excitement out of those words as possible, look at the radar a few times, look at my dashboard to see the weather widget show the snowflakes coming down (well, tomorrow anyway) that I could see perfectly well from my window. “That’s so cool!” and it is.

But…Tonight: 3 minute forecast over the phone. I actually had to stand up to go and get the phone for that, until sitting here on my butt. And instead of scrutinizing all the available data, I take 3 minutes listening the forecast. Do I personally really need more? Why was I allowing it to take so much time?

Because it’s cool! Because I feel cool looking at radar and having some clue about how to interpret it. There’s nothing wrong with that — and Jeff and I have bonded some over this — but if my time is my life, is this really how I need to spend my life? Could I limit myself someday to 5 minutes a day of obtaining the weather forecast? Just curious.
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Another victory of the experiment: today I learned to hand-card wool. There’s a lifetime of refinement but at least I can do it and it’s getting easier. It was the first time I’d done this since second grade — Charlie’s age. And I learned because I had the time.

This is the thing: so much time was spent on the internet doing absolutely nothing real. Research, yes; networking, yes; communication, yes; but most of the rest of it, unnecessary. Titillation is the word that comes to mind, and that’s probably the more socially acceptable word for it. There is in places like Facebook the absolutely convincing idea that I was doing something real…and yes, passing notes is real. Harnessing all that power to help elect our new president or raise money for the Nature Conservancy via ad exposure is real.

But…but….but…the here and now of it is breathtakingly simple: more time in front of a computer screen, pointing and clicking, lost inside it and the mind, consciousness of the here and now utterly lost in cyberspace. Or worse, half-lost then and before and after — the anticipation, the processing post-surfing, when my precious children might be asking questions, wanting my full attention but never quite getting it, or getting it rarely. I got pretty good at pretending to be fully present, or so it seemed.

OK, off to my very real bed which already has my very real sleeping husband in it.