One Day's Head-Breaking Internet History

When I think back over yesterday, it actually feels like a reasonably standard sort of a day.  I began it with a two-hour indulgence in some creativity.  I followed it up with some meditation, then some work, then some yoga, then some more work, and then came the evening where I was online for a reasonable amount of time, chatted to my beloved, did some reading.  A reasonably uneventful sort of a day, I guess, looking in from the outside.  The sort of day I like, where I have plenty of time to do the things that matter to me, all while being able to work from home (I work transcribing court cases for a company in Brisbane here in Oz).

But even though in reality I had oodles of time yesterday to go slowly through it, the way I like, it felt full and constricted.  And when I look at my internet search history for yesterday, it explains exactly why I feel that way.

A rough count of yesterday's internet browsing reveals that I looked at over 600 pages yesterday.  SIX - HUNDRED - PAGES!!

Now, to qualify a little here, to rationalise the unrationalisable.  I guess when I look at the data, yesterday was a little out of the ordinary.  There were a few rather involved and specialised searches going on that involved a lot of trawling through different pages.  Firstly, my partner and I are escaping the pre-Christmas insanity this year, going away a few days before Christmas and coming back when the whole sorry empty consumerism is over.

Searching for accommodation online is fantastic.  Just a few mouse clicks ... or maybe a few hundred.  Because it's sort of hard to stop, once you start.  There's always one more place to look at, even though you've enquired at 25 of them and at least a couple will surely be suitable for you.

Another large component of those ridiculous 600 pages were work-related.  In my transcription work we need to check the correct spelling of all proper names.  And so yesterday involved heaps of searches for names, and streets, and checking to see if what the witness is asking for is really a "Mareva injunction" (it was).

I was also doing a fair bit of hardcore searching for recipes, yesterday.  My manfriend purchased for us our first vegetable box from CERES this week (found and organised online, of course)  It contains a variety of fresh, organic, veggies sourced from local farmers wherever possible.   Much cheaper than buying in an organic shop, and I feel like we're part of something sustainable that is helping small-time farmers.

You don't know what you're getting in the vegetable box - it's a lucky dip of sorts (anyone want a bunch of asparagus?  I can't stand the stuff;  tastes like what the back of my throat did last time I had tonsillitis).  Makes it interesting, and I am happy to report that I have found a way of cooking the FOUR swedes in this week's box.  The weather has turned a little chillier here again - it's been raining constantly this morning, for as long as I've been conscious and good casseroley cooking weather is on the cards.  I love getting recipes online :)

So if it wasn't enough that I spent all that time online, still it goes.  In a day where in some ways it didn't feel like I did a whole lot, I absorbed way more than I can handle comfortably.  But by far the most inspiring was the hour I spent last night watching the rather brilliant documentary Requiem for Detroit? This show was produced for the BBC in England, about a city in America, and was shown on my television station here in Australia several weeks ago.  I accessed it last night when I was ready.

I am still coming to terms with how life looks to us now, with the net.  Have not yet learned how to stem the flow.

Last night I also watched a 20-minute talk given by Elisabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.  It was given in February 2009, posted on TED.com.  I came across it via a link from Robyn Jackson Pearson, who I have chatted to online over the past several years but have never met and probably never will.  She had linked to another clip on TED via Facebook, which I started watching for a minute or two till my ADHD sent me searching elsewhere on the site.

The world wide web, indeed.

Yesterday, in little bits mixed among all the other little bits, I researched jobs on the net, I updated my Quickflix queue, I looked at a few inspiring websites by people who are wanting to change things, I checked my bank balance, looked on eBay for a secondhand ergonomic chair, cos the one I got (off eBay) isn't holding me up straight enough to look at 600+ websites a day.  I looked at the Business Victoria website's case studies of people who have started up businesses.  I chatted to my manfriend at his house 50 ks away, read a few blogs, responded to a few comments,  read some emails.

Earlier in the day I did some yoga - a necessary requirement to stretch out my back after working the day before.  There are some cool yoga sites out there - how awesome it is to flit around and so quickly find out why I am loving fish pose so much.

So there you go.  Do you feel exhausted?  I feel exhausted reading and writing this (and a little embarrassed, too).  I felt exhausted indulging myself in it.

I am determined to curb my internet use, because I have to.  To make space for nothingness.  So that I don't have 40 million things running all round my brain like cocaine.

At the moment I am challenged by the practice of writing fiction from out of my unconscious rather than from my analytical mindspace.  It is very challenging at the best of times.

But when there's such a ginormous influx of information rolling around in my head from the 600 webpages I've inducted into my head in one day, it makes it even more difficult to go into that space.  It's why I write first thing in the morning, coming straight out of sleep, from the dreamspace, from that place that amazes me when I am able to decipher the stories I am telling myself.  My God, I go so deep and so wide.

It's such a beautiful release to fall into that space.

So much space.

Offline

Well, bloggers, I'm gonna be offline till next Sunday. It's been a strange day for me; I have battled with why it is I have felt such terror at the thought of not reading or blogging until then. But I've girded my loins somewhat after struggling with it for most of the day, and I think this fast is gonna be a good one to do. My own little Advent participation in the week of joy.

This past year has been a strange and difficult one for me. Lots of grieving time, lots of licking wounds and coming to terms with my marriage being over and being the main cause for its demise, and trying to get back on my feet after being sick for over six years. In many respects, the past decade has pared my life down to the barest of its bones. It's not something I would have asked for but it's been a good, good thing - or at least the fruit of it has been good. God has done stuff. I can see further. I can see him clearer. This paring happens to everybody at some point; I figure the earlier it begins happening the better. May as well start getting onto the business of dying so we can get to the good stuff of living.

The paring is also a terrifying, terrifying thing. You can't be prepared for it. You must needs cry and lament your way through it and hopefully find some sympathetic ears on the way. When you go back to picking up your life after the dust settles, it's scary, unnerving, exciting. Nothing is the same and neither are you. You realise that the paring has left its mark. For me it's realising that I've greatly lost the ability to be playful, to have fun. Perhaps that is going to change.

Being online has been good thing for me, especially while I was sick and so limited. There is so much life to be had on here. I love blogging, but I hide behind it sometimes simply because it's easier to get home from work and sit here for hours and be bored than it is to step out and do stuff and get back into living again. It's so easy to take a good thing and turn it into some kind of compulsion when its something we can hide behind.

And so now I've come to terms a bit with the fact that I'm not going to be on here and I'm not gonna be reading till Sunday. It's amazing what we can do when we set our minds to it. These times of extreme discomfort are always extremely discomfiting - but the stuff they yield is pretty fine. I feel shyly anticipatory about what might happen to me over this next week, even though I'm scared that I am gonna get bored, that I'm not gonna know what to do with myself, that I'm gonna sit there twiddling my thumbs knee deep in existential angst, feeling like an empty shell (apologies to those of you with children who are going to be having the complete opposite of times next week and who see my upcoming week as some kind of oasis :)

But maybe I'm not gonna go all nihilistic. God tends to come to the party when we make moves to put our party dresses on. It's our lack of vision that thinks he won't turn up. He probably can't help not to :)

And I have rewritten one of the rules, in the Spirit of Lucy and freedom. I get to spend 15 minutes online every day. Just 15 minutes. That's all. The point of this whole exercise is to stop swimming in the words of others and of distractions so the well can be filled. I don't think 15 minutes a day is gonna be enough to ruin that process. And it will keep me sane. Because I am, after all, an addict :)

Hugs to you, bloggers.

Book/Blog Addict

Okay. Julia Cameron has instructed me that I am to not read anything all week. What kind of crazy drugs was this woman on when she wrote this thing? It definitely was not a blogging universe when she wrote this ... so can I cheat? Hehe. Do blogs count?

I'm happy to go a week without reading any books (agh!) but blogs as well? Doesn't she know I've just stopped smoking the chooferoonie? Doesn't that count? (No, Sue, you know that has nothing to do with it!)

I just sent Lucy a desperate comment on her blog and she responded with an encouraging email. I need all the encouragement I can get. So to those of you who have done The Artist's Way, how did you go doing this? Did you feel rather desperate about it? I am still deciding whether to cut out reading blogs completely but I think I"m even more of a blog addict than a book addict (unfortunately) so I don't know if I can really do it. I really don't.

There's the rub. I don't know if I'm strong enough to do this. Even just for a week. That's pathetic, isn't it? But it's true. I am what I am. And the desperate scrambling I'm feeling at the thought makes me think, maybe I should. After all, I went for three days without blogging and reading blogs; this would just be double that. (But I was unable to get online there. What do I do when I have my laptop sitting here just waiting for me? Huh? What then?)

If I do this, I'm gonna cheat and not start till tomorrow, anyway, I've decided (hehe. Just want to feel the needle slide under the skin for one more day). But if I stop reading blogs, then I probably really will have to stop writing them as well. Won't I. (Damn you, Lucy). Can I do this? It feels so empty. What would I do instead? (Gee, I dunno - like, 6 million things????)

God, I don't feel like I can do this. Help! Pliz! Anyone of the praying persuasion, can you pray for me please? I seriously want to do this for the benefits I know I'll get out of it - but I really don't feel like I can. Pray for the conviction.

Lucy said it was a magical time for her. If I was looking a bit higher than at my feet, the ground, and my desperation, I would imagine that God would be delighted at the opportunity to insert a few deliciousnesses into this coming week for me, his kid, who is trying to do this difficult thing. Like for all of us. Maybe we miss them when we're scuffing our feet and feeling sorry for ourselves.

But dammit, I do! :) And as much as I'm making light of this, it's just to keep the goddamn terror at bay. I'm scared.

Book Addictions

The internet is a nasty little beastie when it comes to fuelling my book addiction. I was reading Lucy's interesting post and the comments about the blurts we have in our heads that stop us creating. Lucy mentioned she was going through Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, which I have done before - at least partially - but don't own. I really like Julia's stuff. She has cool tips like taking yourself on an "artist date" once a week (I have found this quite powerful; has anyone else?) It's a date that you take by yourself, to wherever you go to fuel your creativity (for me it is often the movies). It must be done by yourself, and this is where I think its power lies. Doing stuff by yourself is empowering, but to frame it as an artist's date, while sounding a bit formal, is actually very inspiring. It's like telling the inner critic that you are serious about your talents. Good stuff.

Anyway, so all it took after that was a quick look at my bookshelf - a couple of other Cameron titles but not that one - and a couple of mouse clicks and voila, I am the leading bidder on EBay. So here goes another 30 buck purchase.

It's often cheaper to buy stuff secondhand from the US than Australia, even when you throw in postage. It's one of the bad things about being at the arse end of the world. (Although really, I guess that all depends on your perspective.)

I am just full of addictions, it seems. Stop smoking dope, start buying books. (Or keep buying books, I should say. My prayer to God to stop lasted for a few weeks but I have sinned again). Oh well.

I don't really care, to be honest :) Can you tell? I have other worse addictions than books (and no, I'm not telling. I've bared my soul enough lately).

Addictions

When I was away, two days in a row I got up, put the kettle on, stumbled outside and wrote a page or two of whatever came out. "Morning pages" someone called them in one of the creativity books I have. Dorothea Brande was a big exponent of tapping into your unconscious first thing when you're coming out of the waters of sleep.

I did morning pages a lot when I was sick. Back then, writing very much at all was just almost impossible. I yearned every day to be able to write something other than morning pages, and hardly ever got there. But at least writing those was a way of venting and getting my considerable angst and anger and anguish out onto the page instead of onto everyone else, or myself.

But I could see even then the reason why writing first thing is such a powerful thing to do. Now I am well, it is even more of a powerful thing to do. But I don't very often do it. When I was away, I resolved anew that I would begin again to do this first thing, every morning getting up and writing just a page of gobbledegook (it's amazing what gems come up in the middle of a big pile of steaming gobbledegook).

But so far, my first thing in the morning routine looks exactly the way it did before I went away - get up, put kettle on, stumble to computer, sit for an hour (on a good day). I was trying to justify this to myself by saying that, well, maybe I could write a blog post first thing and that would be the same thing. Nah. It's not. Because, as beautiful as you all are, Blogland, you are still "them", and when I write knowing that "them" are reading it, I'm not as open as the deep dark stuff I write when the only eyes reading it are my own.

So it's not the same thing. And so this morning I am feeling a bit peeved at this stupid internet addiction I have and my inability thus far to keep it under control. Why can I not revel in the delights of online but put it off for an hour or two, instead of jumping to it as soon as my eyes snap open? Grrrr.

Still, one must deal with one's addictions one at a time. And at the moment, I am dealing with the bad habit I have developed over the past couple of years of having a couple of puffs of a joint several times a week (in a good week). Now, I know that some people have an abhorrence for marijuana, automatically screaming "Schizophrenia! Schizophrenia!" I tend to scream, "Moderation! Moderation" in reply. I don't personally see much difference between a couple of tokes and a glass of red. From my personal experience, the evils of alcohol have affected me personally way more than if my father had instead been the stoned guy sitting in the corner chilling out instead of spewing out vitriol. But I digress.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, that's right - I was confessing my propensity for a few tokes. It has never really been an escapism thing for me, more a heightening. A couple of puffs casts a lovely light to an otherwise average day (which is its very problem). It takes me away from the writing that I really want to do and sends me off into other areas which are fun at the time, but ultimately distractions. This is the best time of year for me to write, and this season I really want to actually produce something that is bigger than a blog post (as fun as this is).

And I still have this leftover cough from the horrors of tracheitis and dragging on a fag doesn't help. But mainly, the problem that I have with it, even though it's not a great problem in the grand scheme of things, is that ultimately it's an idol. It's being unwilling to be in the day as it is, with God, and instead taking it upon myself to cast the glow. So in that way it is escapism, and it is idolatry, and I just don't really want to do it anymore.

I felt God saying to me several years ago that a time was going to come when he would ask me to lay this down. He was busy working on other areas at the time, but it was like a sensing of him saying, "I'm aware of this, but it's not time yet. But just know that at some point, it will be time. So prepare yourself for that".

I'm not sure if it is that time. I can't say I will never smoke anything again. But I definitely know that I don't want to keep any in the house. It's just too tempting. So I guess that's a start, huh.

I didn't know that I was going into confessional mode this morning. There you go :) I must say, it's much easier revealing my inner ugliness on here than it is face-to-face with people ... but still, I am finding even that easier to do these days. I think Paul's talking about delighting in your own weaknesses might be coming into play here. I have never once in my whole Christian experience ever felt like God was saying to me that if I didn't change right now he was gonna dump me. He is just not like that. I know he's got it all under control. I just get frustrated with how long he takes to do it, sometimes :)

I wanna be perfect right now :)