Calming internet

I'm feeling the need to explain a little my sleep deprived comment made in class the other day. Seriously, when I've only had 2 and a half hours of sleep I really should stop talking in class. It was like watching a train wreck, I knew everything I was saying was incredibly stupid, but I couldn't make it stop. Now I know that sleep deprivation a cause for verbal diarrhea.

So in class I said that the internet calms me, but I don't see myself as addicted. I think what I meant to say was, at this point and time the internet is my way to unwind. When I have had a stressful day, like the introvert that I am, I de-stress by surfing the net. Basically it's my equivalent to the American obsession with TV. In stead of zoning out in front of the TV. I take advantage of the fact that I need decidedly less brain cells in order to work the internet than I do to do my reading for class or to think about all the things I need work out.

While it's entirely possible that I'm in denial, I don't consider myself to be addicted to the net - I consider myself addicted, like most other human beings are, to a way to unwind at the end of the day. At the moment, I don't have a TV, and I have very few books available to me that I actually want to read for fun. When I go home however, or on vacation, and these things are more readily available I unconsciously switch my unwinding habits to something else and go weeks without using my computer.

I gave an example of an assignment in high school where we were asked to give up technology and I found myself unable to unwind. The way I justify to myself that this is not a sign of my obsession with the net is that while when I go home there is a gradual unconscious relocation of my habits concerning the unwind - in this case it was abruptly placed upon me, and when whatever I deemed to be stress-inducing in high school happened I had not yet formed new habits to deal with it.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


A question that this brings to mind is - is the net becoming my replacement for TV and books? Youtube is decidedly more convenient than my cable-less, TV guideless TV (yes my family is still in the caveman age of TV use). I can see what I want to see when I want to without commercials thanks to my computer. When I want to 'pick up a book' and read before I fall asleep, I can also just go online and read some amateur fiction or the fictional non-fiction available on blogs. Maybe there will come a day where unless my computer crashes or I am on vacation somewhere without internet connection I will just continue to use the net as my unwind tool because of it's practicality?

The world may never know

-N