The Great Addiction...

I have a confession to make....

I am an addict.

Now before I start getting comment after comment about "don't do drugs" or (even worse) "bro me too I light 'em up all day e'ry day", I should probably make it clear that that's not me. I'm not addicted to drugs or alcohol, even though that would be pretty rock n' roll....

No I'm addicted to something whose talons claw a bit deeper than those mere flights of fancy.

And although this may come as a surprise to many of you, you're probably just as desperate an addict as me.

I am addicted to the Internet.

For the past one and a half months I've been fighting withdrawal symptoms. Suppressing the need to check my Facebook feed every couple of hours. Fighting the urge to check my email to see if I'd been contacted by the various agencies who needed to contact me. Missing people desperately cos I couldn't skype them or even message them. Having a million words to say and not even being able to communicate to the online masses through blogging.

It's not as if I meant to break my addiction by going cold turkey, it's just the way things happened. After taking a hard shot of 2 gigs on my t-stick, like an junkie I surfed the web, bought some music (Ryan Adams) and wrote an epic blog about country music (which unfortunately has now been forever lost to the world).
Then I ran out.

As I was too poor to justify buying another crazily expensive top-up, I thought I'd do the hard yards.
So apart from the very limiting internet on my phone (you couldn't even type an email without it taking 3 hours and a myriad of spelling mistakes which were near impossible to correct!) and the occasional "trip" to Macca's and the Library to utilize the free services, I was internet-less as an animal. Probably more so, given the amount of people's pets you can find on Facebook these days...

Today, in my one of the first lectures I have ever attended in my life, the lecturer made an interesting point - that our ideologies, experiences and views of the world are so, so, SO heavily meditated. We don't even notice it when we take the hit, but it doesn't take us too long to go under and subscribe to a system that sometimes encourages distance more than it does bring people closer together.

I mean we've all done it - messaged your family/ mate when they're sitting right next to you? Skyped your friends when they live a block away? It's cool right? Makes you feel pretty funny and you have a good laugh about it.

But are our physical lines of communication that bad that we have to resort to such desperate technological measures? 

See the thing which makes internet so addictive is that it's convenient. As a Generation Y-er sitting on the edge of Generation Z I know from personal experience that my, that our generation is all about what is comfortable and convenient for us. See, we're all about the individual, as long as that individual is us, not someone else. Yet is this always for the best? I've always found that the times in my life which are the best times are when I have been pushed out of my comfort zone. When things aren't always convenient, we unplug our devices and get down to the business of actually living, outside of the technological cage which we voluntarily make our prison.


I really guess now that I should have used my time wisely to connect with people on a much more personal level instead of pining about not having my latest web fix. It's funny how we notice these things in hindsight.

Still, there has been a few pointers I've picked up on. 
1) You get things done a lot faster if you go there in person.
I would have got so lost today if I hadn't visited Uni in the weekend with one of my very good friends and checked out my classes. And I most probably would have got the awfully long process of getting internet at our flat sorted a lot earlier if I had have been able to visit Slingshot's head office and complain about it there.
2) Worship is actually the best way ever to get some decent R&R in the midst of a difficult situation.
See, while internet is a quick fix, a short dose that never really manages to fully connect or satisfy regardless of what you're doing with it, worship is like a cure-all vitamin tablet that is good for the body, good for the soul and longer-lasting than anything we could find online (yes, even blogging!). There was one evening where I was having the roughest day out: had some family problems, problems sorting out uni stuff, had found out I wasn't getting internet for another week, and to top it all off my flatmate had just told me he was moving out. After a completely exhausting day at work it was the worst dose of bad news to happen. Not going to lie, I was close to tears. Then I picked up my guitar and began singing, and it was like a totally different spirit came on me, and I could see more from God's perspective than mine and couldn't help singing to his glory. It really was the best thing out there.
3) There is nothing better than a real-life conversation.
Although we've had some rough times in the flat already this year, my flatmates are pretty good sorts. And one night we all just ended up sitting in the kitchen talking for 2 hours about life and everything and it was just the best time ever. Real good community, good chat, and we had more than a few laughs. Really when you get down to it, that is one of the saddest things about this internet drug - that it can keep people away from each other because really it is easier to send a facebook message than actually arrange a time to meet up.


See, sometimes this thing called Internet ends up using us up rather than us using it.


While I reflect on all this and am now cautious of not taking my "addiction" too far, I can honestly say that it is good to have internet back. It's good to be back on blogspot.com again, and I hope that YOU'VE found it good that I'm back too. And maybe one day we will actually catch up for real, and we might just talk about this blog and what I was thinking about when I wrote it and what it made you think about when you read it. Then maybe, just maybe social media and the internet might be working for me rather than me working for it....

Blessings,

Jordan