My addictions

This comic describes the story of my online life.

Here I am going to bare my soul to you.

Beware all ye bloggers lest the blog consume you.  So says #2 to me as she forwards on said comic.  What she forgets is that it has always been like this for me.  Thank goodness I never got into online games, though I did have a brief stint with Furcadia in college.  Luckily it didn’t interest me all that much.  There is, however, a reason I don’t play regular computer games and even minesweeper is not allowed on my computers.

I think my first trap was the Chronicle of Higher Ed forum.  It was young.  I was young.  People thought I was a white male tenured full professor.  I spent a lot of time on it dispensing my wisdom.  Way too much time.  Luckily the moderator screwed up one day and let everybody’s IP address become known and that got really creepy (there were a couple of incredibly scary members), so I quit cold turkey.  I had to jimmy my computer, going deep into its electronic entrails to block the website to prevent me from accessing it.  Many times I would automatically go to the site only to see the blocked message.  Ah, commitment devices.  Without you I would probably have died of dehydration and malnutrition.

Next up, an infertility forum.  I got kicked off (after baby was born– so I’d gotten what I needed, and was mostly dispensing my wisdom about very different things than I had on CHE… not so much ttc and bf on CHE…  ;)  ) because I was also on a mother’s forum that the owner of the first site didn’t like.  I had thousands of posts before that fateful day.  The mother’s forum I left on my own because they’d had a third forum where they discussed people on the mother’s forum not nicely, and when people found out the drama surrounding it was just too much (I’d actually been invited to join when the exclusive third forum started, but as a commitment device opted not).  So I left.  They still email me on my birthday, which is kind of weird.

Briefly I toyed with LibraryThing and though I love its cataloging and abilities to tell me what books I need, I have not really been sucked in.  It gets to stay.

In a new town, I joined another forum and got invited to an exclusive members group local to my area IRL.  It doesn’t update so often, so I don’t really have a problem with keeping it.  Related was a natural parenting group I got invited to, but I’ve already posted about why I had to leave that one.  (Blue children?  Ick.)

So my latest online addiction?  Blogging.  We’ll see if I can keep it to a manageable pace or if it too will need intervening (interventioning?). Every time I drop an addiction I’m happier for a little while.  Then something new starts up.  Usually slowly in a limited fashion.  But eventually it takes over.  So there you have it.  It is amazing that I have accomplished as much as I have given my addictive personality.  If only work could be so addicting. Right now I’m doing fine with blogging… it’s cutting into my anime-watching, internet surfing, and novel reading time, but doesn’t seem to be affecting work, family, or other responsibilities.  Hopefully #2 will cut me off if I go too far.  Or DH will install one of those time limiting thingies on my computer so the page turns off after a certain amount of time.

Is that too much soul-baring and not enough witty observation?  Quick,  #2, say something funny!

#2 says: you spelled “bare” your soul wrong in that last sentence. Until I fixed it, an Alaskan brown bear was coming for your eternal soul. Rawr.

#1:  He was going to ravage it.

Do you (or does someone you know) have problems with electronic addiction?  What do you do besides going cold turkey?