i – Crazy

It’s my birthday today and I’m feeling a rant coming on. So I have a confession to make to all you bloggers out there. My name is Pat and I’m i-crazy!   

My eyes are strained, my neck is sore,
i just can’t do this anymore,
There’s something that i must recant,
And that’s the reason for my rant…

In this world of cyber-madness, i believe we have morphed into a society of on-call junkies that holds on to our i-things with an obsession close to insanity.

What happened? Last week, my i-Phone died while i was waiting to get the car fixed. i love my i-Phone with a passion reserved for puppy loving. Panic ensued when i realized i had 2 hours to kill with no email, no phone, no news and no online scrabble games. i felt lost, alone and abandoned by my best friend…despite the fact that Hubsey was sitting right beside me.

“What will i do?” i shrieked.

“Read a magazine or talk to me,” he replied. Now there’s something i hadn’t considered.

Gizmo cowboys: In this fast paced age of broadband communications and networked economy, we wear our access mechanisms like digital gunslingers. All you have to do is look around and see the multi-tasking i-crazy people using cell phones everywhere – dangerously in cars, rudely in restaurants, arrogantly on sidewalks, destructively at school plays and collectively around the kitchen table. The family that i-phones together becomes unglued.

Call-us-interruptus: But what is the impact of these instant communication devices on our lives? How many misplaced tremors in the bedroom are the result of some pulsating cell phone shaking it up on the nightstand? When did the fusion of man and digital display units take priority over intimate whisperings between the sheets? And when did our on-call status extend to the boudoir?

Ambushed: i’ve come to believe that when private moments are intercepted by our i-stuff, vital energies are sucked out of that point in time – causing a disturbance in our connections to human contact. We rush to squeeze our thoughts into byte-sized pieces, as our interactions are interwoven into a virtual sense of reality.

Intervention: i used to read about 3 books a week. Now i’m lucky to finish one in a month! What am i doing instead of reading? i’m playing online scrabble, texting, writing emails, checking the weather and reading the news – all day long on my i-Phone! i carry it wherever i go. It sits on my nightstand and is the first thing i pick up in the morning to check the news, before my feet hit the floor. And i can’t seem to stop! i need help!

Tempus fugit: Oh it’s all fun and games when you’re i-crazy all right. i love every virtual minute of it…every cyber-hour of it…every 3G day of it. But i’ve also come to believe that i’ve lost something along the way – time. And i want it back.

Silence!  i think it’s time to stop the i-craziness and take stock of what we all have become as instant communication animals. i think we need to call a cease-fire on the tweeting, texting, beeping, buzzing and vibrating long enough to put our priorities in place – before we become i-roadkill on the information highway.

Alone again: i think we need to sit quietly in a place where we can’t be reached, for whatever time it takes to be comfortable with our own silence; and to enjoy our primal need for solitude, mating and feeding without interruption. i think we need to be alone with our thoughts to hear what we’re saying from the inside out.

Final word: And lastly, i think we need ongoing discussions with our families to stay the course and together with them, choose the right times to turn the noise back on – when we like, where we like and if we like. As for me – i promise i’m really going to try.

So here i sit without my phone,
i feel so lost and all alone,
If you can help me through my fog,
Please leave a comment on my blog.

Pat Skene