I am addicted to the internet.

[Phillycat]

For a long time now, I’ve been saying, “I’m addicted to the internet” and knowing that I wasn’t actually kidding. I am 100%, knock-down junkie-fix-craving hooked on the fucking internet. Which just goes to show I can get addicted to anything.

Let me clarify. Here’s my day. I wake up, turn over (at the moment, while I’m still in the States, my Macbook sleeps with me), and get online. Check email, Twitter, my three blogs, and Facebook. Get up, pee, shower, come back in the bedroom, check email, Twitter, my three blogs, and Facebook while I’m getting dressed. Drive to work, log on, check email, Twitter, Facebook, my three blogs, Flickr, New York Times online, BBC online, NPR online, several political message boards, and begin the daylong process of reading everything in my Google Reader feed. I am currently subscribed to 78 sites, many of which update daily, some of which update several times per day. Stuff like I Can Haz Cheezburger might send me 10 updates per day. I almost never have more than 2 or 3 things waiting to be read because I read feeds all day long. Most of the time, I have nothing to read waiting.

I leave work (at noon at the moment), drive home, get my Macbook, take it downstairs, and prepare and eat lunch in front of the computer. I spend the afternoon online, obsessively checking for updates on all the sites mentioned above. I am incredibly bored during this process because there is hardly any new content, but I find it almost physically painful to log off.

By evening, I usually get myself embroiled in some pointless and often angry political discussion here or elsewhere because I have nothing better to do online, and god forbid I put the fucking computer down. Before I go to bed, I check everything one last time, or more accurately 5 or 6 last times before I log off.

On days when I have something scheduled that I need/want to do, I feel amazing because I’m offline. I feel grateful for anything that takes me away from the computer. My mind clears and I am less angry and depressed. Some days I take the computer to Starbucks to write, somewhat because it’s a conducive atmosphere for writing, but even more because they make you pay for internet access (which is quite a fucking cheek considering they charge you 5 dollars for a fucking coffee) and I refuse to pay it, so the internet is banned to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t check 15 or 20 times while I’m there to see if there’s a wireless connection.

If you aren’t familiar with drug addiction, you’re just going to have to trust me that what I’ve written above is addiction, plain and simple. And it is actually (can you believe this) making my life unamanagable.

So.

As of today at 12 noon, I am going offline for one week. I will make one exception - I will check my email, because I’m still (FUCKING STILL) waiting for the notice that my visa is approved, and also because that’s often how my husband and I communicate while I’m gone. But email is not one of the things I can spend hours or even minutes doing, anyway. I check it and go away. But other than email, I am banning myself from the internet. Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, DU, other message boards, news sites, everything. If anything very important happens in the world, I sure hope someone emails me, because otherwise I’ll never know.

Wish me luck. I am terrified. I’ll see you on February 3rd. Or maybe not!