Once again it’s almost midnight and my husband and I are still blogging. This wit fest of a post came to me as I was shutting down my computer and whisper-yelling at Dave, “We have to go to bed – now! Ellie will be up in three hours!” We have spent the evening semi apart, me at my desk in the drafty front room / office / unused but sadly expectant 7’X5’ art studio and he at the kitchen table. We run back and forth to take a look at each others latest comments that were moderated successfully into the blogosphere. We discuss WordPress templates and the merits of Biz Stone’s book, Who Let the Blogs Out? Great book but; what were his parents thinking?We are shamefully geeky. TICK, TOCK, TICK, TOCK ROUND THE CLOCK, STILL BLOGGING AWAY. Blogging, though easy, fun and the very thing that is going to deliver us from the long, low-lit New England Winter, is, quite simply - ADDICTIVE!
Biz claims it makes you smarter and that it’s about being in the moment. I agree. Being in the moment is the essence of blogging. I wrote my master’s thesis about this being in the moment, time stopping crap and can tell you it’s called Flow. One of the main side effects of Flow is that it feels great. Your self-efficacy rises; your mind is optimally engaged. It’s a tiptoe on the fine line between stress and boredom.
However, since I began blogging I have gained a whole new perspective on Flow. Or maybe I should call it Flog or Flogging for the new phenomenon of being in the Flow whilst blogging…hmmm. You read it here first. Flogging. Ok – actually that means to whip someone… well, if the shoe fits…
Anyway, I discovered that when you are actually in the moment, time goes by way faster than if you are worrying about the future or pining for the past. It’s such a bummer. When I finally get the knack of being in the moment I run out of time to do it for long!
But is this not the essence of addiction? Time spent with the drug of choice, or your blog, is never enough. When you are not imbibing your drug of choice you are thinking about the next time you will. For example, since I started my blog I have had to stop what I was doing to capture a funny thought that will turn into some witty post and in doing so the 73 minutes, 13 seconds, and 12 nanoseconds that Ellie naps vanishes before you can say, “Publish My Post”. It’s just outright irresponsible. Instead of looking for work, honing my experience summary, responding to requests for lunch with people who could potentially hire me, I am thinking about how to make interesting and funny comments on my life. Yes, my life, which is getting more myopic by the moment.
Some humorless fascist once told me that I was my own biggest fan. Damn him, he’s right. My blog, where posts go to die, is a one-way ticket. I laugh at my own posts but I don’t know if anyone else does. So does that mean I am sitting here making up things to amuse myself? Yikes, the thought of it and implications are reverberating to the depth of my over educated psychologist psyche. If anyone out there want’s to start a 12-step program for obsessive bloggers, please, contact me immediately! Isn’t that the first step? Admitting there’s a problem?
Hello, my name is Kathyrn and I’m a Blogaholic.
3 comments:
i think you have hit on exactly why time actually does speed up after you have a child. who lives in the moment more than a baby/toddler/kid?
i felt like i looked up and all of a sudden a year had gone by. my friends had some gray hair. my parents look old. and i'm thinking, "when did this happen?" oh yeah, while i was in the vortex of-being in-the-momentness with my child.
So true, and remember when you were a kid and your mom said, "Wait one minute." One minute felt like an eternity. There were a billion bits of mischeif you could get into in ONE minute. Now hours feel like minutes. The vortex of parenthood.
Hi Kathryn
I've always enjoyed making sandcastles. When I build a sandcastle there's more to it than meets the eye of most. Although new to blogging, I'd say, from the way you describe it, bloggers often experience this same flow or a timelessness connected with it that I experience with sandcastles.
There is that creative aspect to both of these endeavours where we put form to what was formless. You can build a sandcastle, as you might a blog, with an intention in mind, but we have chosen to do something that is ultimately, and undeniably temporary. I know that I can't extract anymore out of the moment than I can when I'm building a sandcastle. It is obsessive, but it's also a lot of fun. And the temporary nature of it all just reminds me of life, a side of it that adults tend to deny, but children don't have time to concern themselves with as they are too busy living in the moment.
Marc
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