Life Offline

Today I'm going to be talking about something that is new to oh so many people on the internet, and that's life without the World Wide Web, or a computer for that matter.
Briefly I would like to say again sorry for not writing a proper blog last week but details can be found down there about the reasons for the blogs absence.

So, over the last few weeks (2 perhaps, maybe even 3) my visits to the computer screen and the large variety of websites I frequent have dwindled, and at some points I didn’t type anything or even turn on the screen for days at a time. But it's fine now, my computer is closer now, and most of the redecorating is done.

at first I thought it was strange not being at my desk a lot, at any possible time I would fire up the Acer and check my emails, but as I grew more tired from work and other "components" to my... rehab, were introduced, I found the need for MSN, Cracked and even this little website called face book (it's not very big, I doubt you've heard of it) dwindled away to almost nothing, causing me to fast the internet (not by all accounts of course, my Xbox live account still maintained a good workout.)

I don't know if you can put this down to laziness or me realising I don’t have to be refined by the shackles of technology, but I soon gave up the need to be at the computer at all, even breaking a vow I made to myself at the beginning of this blog of writing it once a week no matter what. Normally I would return from work of a day, go down into my room and "log on" but over this period, I didn’t have a computer in my room to log on to, nor did I have to go "down" into my room, since my new room is adjacent to my front door... Yeah I’m going to put it down to laziness.

But life offline has been actually pretty fulfilling, and isolating in equal measures.
for instance, for a brief time last week I had one of those social life things, I took it upon myself to come out of my hibernation state on the days I wasn't working and met with real life people, even enjoyed a movie, and then on Saturday, one of the most social events I've been to in a long time, (well since the last one) in which I went to a concert and made a new "friend" or 2. Granted with my lack of mobility and lack of time due to my heavy work hours (7 hours overtime on my last payslip) I did have to resort to technology to organise these things, but then hey, I never said I was going to be a techno-hermit. That itself conjures images of a beardy tramp raving to some Drum and Bass, and that my friends is not going to happen to me. It’s also allowed me to really relax (if you can call moving anything anywhere relaxing) when I was tired, or stressed, instead of whining to a friend and causing some aggravated tension over a screen I merely lay down on my bed put on the radio or a nice calming CD and relax for half an hour. Then I'd go to work because I realised I had fallen asleep and it was 8:55 the next morning.

But Apart from the slight change in a few social events, I think I can safely say that I prefer life online. I wired it all up last night, so I’m about 18 hours into having a computer and I’m already feeling the benefits, much like a junkie who has got a fix after being in rehab, except I’m not addicted. Yet.
Ok, so I don’t know how big a commitment you readers have to the internet, how many websites you “frequent” or how often you like to update things, in fact why don’t you leave a comment and tell me? But with me, I tend to have a few websites which are updated daily which I like to have a look at when I can, this takes from half an hour to an hour to do, a day. So as you can imagine after not really paying much attention to the internet for a few days, I had a whole lot of catching up to do, unfortunately my websites seemed to have updated more than usual and now I have a general feeling of being out of sync, and not just with the sites, with my friends. I don’t suppose any of you do the old trick of checking people’s statuses or PM’s to see what’s going on, but a lot of my friends have things I know nothing about. Now I grant you that the areas I know nothing about far surpass the areas I know a bit about and dwarf the areas I know a lot about (this really only includes comedy and converse, oh and harry potter. No shame there I suppose) but it still came as a shock, it’s similar as to when you go away for a holiday and come back and 2 of your friends are now seeing someone, or broken up or someone’s got an I phone, you know, really significant things. But it’s not all loneliness and cluelessness. For instance I am soon to be sort of replacing my current, loyal and all round good guy creative MP3 player (apply named Steve) for an IPod, so to prepare for this huge transition (when you rely on music to get you through your day as much as me, its not a choice that doesn’t need preparation) I have changed my media player from well, Media player, to iTunes, now before this me and iTunes had some, how the street kids call, beef, in the way I never understood anything it did ever. But know it’s sorted me and him are best friends, he even found me the 2nd Lazlo bane album, making him my super mega new best friend.

So in all, the internet is good, but as with everything, especially steak it should not be over done, or underdone.

Joe Strange
Never realised how many times I use a first person pronoun in my blog, it must make me sound very self obsessed. Well I know better.