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If I didn’t have a wife, kids, job, and music to take up most of my time I would probably be addicted to the Internet too!
I did go through a phase while in college where I spent almost all of my time playing online roleplaying games (MUDs). This was actually a pretty serious problem and I probably dropped my final overall GPA a whole point because of it.
[MUD = multi-user dungeon/domain]
-brett
“A jug of wine, A leg of lamb,
And thou! Beside me,
Whistling in the darkness.”
[ This Message was edited by: Bretton on 2003-02-28 14:53 ]
I spend more time than is probably wise or sane on the internet, which is one reason I give it up for Lent every year (yes, really!). In fact, that’s coming up pretty quickly here…as of midnight next Tuesday, I’ll be off-line other than to read and answer my emails a couple of times a day and to read CNN once a day. No discussion boards until Easter.
I find this helps me keep something of a balance, while focusing, at this time of year, on more essential matters. I do miss it though…introvert that I am, this is my major social activity! (kinda sad, isn’t it?)
Redwolf
On 2003-02-28 14:45, Redwolf wrote:
I spend more time than is probably wise or sane on the internet, which is one reason I give it up for Lent every year (yes, really!). In fact, that’s coming up pretty quickly here…as of midnight next Tuesday, I’ll be off-line other than to read and answer my emails a couple of times a day and to read CNN once a day. No discussion boards until Easter…
Aww, Redwolf 
We’ll miss ya! It’s gonna take you another week for you to read everything you missed. (You know you’ll do it! loll!)
Ill tell ya whats sad Redwolf. I too am an internet junky and it is also my social outlet and I didnt know that you were going to be away for 40 hole days. That makes me sad. I always look forward to what you have to say and, if I may be so bold, you add a since of balance to this wounderfull place.
I will miss you.
Tom
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As someone who spends only abt. 4 hours max on the net on a free day, some might have it that I’m moderate. I wonder. That’s time I could spend practicing, among other things. The majority of my webtime is spent here at C&F, though, and the upside is that I’ve found myself becoming less shy in the 3D. I DO suspect a correlation between my playtime here and greater ease of expression in the face-to-face world. I can see how easy it would be to spend even more time on the internet. Just today I was looking up info on seitan (wheat gluten, not satan by another orthography 
), and all I can say is there sure is a pile -if not always a wealth- of info out there! The seitan seaching alone ate up abt. an hour right there.
N, gotta go and do 3D stuff now. No, really.
I wouldn’t know about Internet addiction as I am just a lurker, really.
Slippery slope if you work at a computer or use one a lot for other things. Add unanticipated unemployment and before they turn off the juice, one can lurk a bit more expansively, as I have discovered.
Best wishes to you, Touw. You know what you gotta do. Set a time limit, etc etc. And for what its worth, I have found that people either do take what is said personally and really mean what they say, or hide behind their monikers and say things they wouldn’t have the courage to say to other’s faces. You run the risk of being hurt by the latter, but how can you discern the difference without getting your ears burned once in a while? I don’t know.
Most of the Chiffsters are pretty nice, tho.
Touw, a last comment before I’m off: that had to be harsh. Anyone who discounts e-nteraction (sorry) as not “real” has blinders on. Would abusive handwritten letters be more valid? I think not. Sick people often lash out and try to find the jugular, and IMO communication is communication. Period. Hang in there, Touw.
N, gone
I dont find the internet evil. Thats like saying "that gun killed that person" We all have ideosincrasies that we must deal with. But they belong to us and are not the fault of the instument we become involved with. I started seeing a shrink years ago for PTSD and soon found that the drugs they had me taking and the help they were trying to give me was less then valuable. What was valuable was understanding that I had to deal with this proplem. No one could deal with it for me. I had to stop blameing my condition on any one thing because I cant give this problem away. So I reinvent myself regularly. I deal with my problem daily. Yes it is a struggle and at times it seems more than I can bare, and there are times where my depression is so overwhelming that I just allow it to consume me and have its way with me knowing I still have the strength to climb back out of that black hole and start again. Never give up on your self, and realize you create your own reality. Life is a wounderfull puzzel that takes years to perfect. Good luck.
Tom
I try to pretend I’m not, but I’m fooling myself.
I get antsy if I don’t have internet access after a week or so, always afraid I’m missing something… :-
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I know where all of you are coming from. I have been admonished by more than one person about this. (“If you spent even half as much time and effort on people you actually know as you do on your forum buddies, you would never be lacking for company.”)
I think I will join Redwolf in giving up forums and chats for Lent. Instead, I will invest my time and effort in people I know and in making friends of people I don’t know. Also, I will work on all those Easter tunes and make sure they’re polished up by then. Maybe by the time Easter is over, I’ll have some more clips to contribute!
On 2003-02-28 16:30, BrassBlower wrote:
I think I will join Redwolf in giving up forums and chats for Lent. Instead, I will invest my time and effort in people I know and in making friends of people I don’t know.
I’ll try to compensate for your absence, and Redwolf’s during the holy season of reflection. Godspeed, my brother and sister.
I may pop in just once during Lent. I’ve been working on St. Patrick’s Breastplate, planning to post it for St. Patrick’s day (and forgetting that it falls about two weeks after Lent starts this year).
Then again, I may just record it, and have my hubby post it. If you see something here from “Werepoodle”, that’s my dh
Redwolf
Let me ask two questions of those who spend what they consider an inordinate amount of time on line (I’ll leave it to you whether that’s two hours a day, four, ten or whatever).
1: How long have you been online (years)?
2: Does it interfere significantly with the “rest” of your life>
The reasons I ask are that I find that this tends to decrease as our overall time online lengthens. I used to spend much longer online, especially well into the early AM, to the point where it affected my outside life and job. As the novelty wore off, it declined to a much more reasonable level.
But then, I’d been online for several years before there really was an internet or an AOHell, in such services as Compuserve, GEnie and Delphi. The internet can’t really be said to be an addiction in that there is no physiological factor.
It’s like any other form of attraction, though. If you think you’re doing it too much, you probably need to force yourself to slow down and find other ways to occupy at least part of your time.
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touw: You should go to an Irish music camp this summer for a week and get away from it all!
This might be good (and maybe close?):
http://www.augustaheritage.com/irish.html
-brett
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