My friend Paul wrote a piece the other day about some life-changing experiences he recently had after “unplugging” from the online identity he’s been for the past twenty years. He said he’d decided to retreat from Facebook, turn off his e-mail, shut down his Twitter account and “drop out” for a few days to find a little bit of peace “just rowing his kayak around the lake” with his wife. He said it was wonderful.
I read on as he described gliding across the water having one lofty revelation after another, each one shedding more light on how far away from the ‘real world’ he’d gotten. After years of sitting in front of a computer and navigating his business and social life on a 27 inch monitor, he’d had enough.
I was reading my own story.
He was describing every ‘symptom’ I’ve been feeling for the past year. Over-stimulation. Chaos and confusion. Loss of any ability to concentrate on any one thing for more than a few minutes at a time. Checking Facebook and email ten times a day. Watching CNN, MSNBC, and Wall Street tickers until late afternoon every day. All the while fending off the persistent, dismantling feeling that there was more to do than could get done in the course of a day, but getting nothing of anything significant done as a result. And all the while, the reality being that he wasn’t actually participating in life anymore. He was just sitting in a chair in a little room by himself “connecting” to virtual relationships that had no hope of ever actually being warm.
And there I sat, too.
I’d like to say I don’t know how I got to this place, how a busy work load had me side-tracked and how I’d lost track of the more important things. I wish I could say that. But, the truth is that I put myself here, lost in personal grief at the departure of my mate and dismantled from the heart up; disfunctional to the point that I couldn’t make a sound decision and take initiative if someone held a gun on me.