Addiction

Being currently wrapped up in series 4 of Desperate Housewives and seeing one of the characters struggle with an addiction (no spoilers I promise), it got me thinking about how much time I spend being addicted to things. Not dangerous things, I'm not that exciting, but certainly little everyday things that notch up the minutes as they eat away at your life. I don't want to think of the amount of hours frittered away on the internet that could be spent doing something useful like knitting, needlework or scrapbooking.

Like Facebook. I've just spent more than an hour surfing on facebook. OK so yesterday night I had my choir practice and I've been working far too much today, so I've been using my time resourcefully up to now, but my evening has just been swallowed up by reading amusing comments and watching funny but time-wasting video posts.

Like text messaging. Not the actual typing of the messages but the checking of the phone - I must do that twenty times a day. Fumbling around in my handbag to fish it out, checking the screen and putting it back must gnaw off a good half hour from every day of my life.

Like email. In my job I have an email in the office and one which is online with a password. Typing in the login and password must take up another half an hour every day. Let alone checking gmail and hotmail when I get home.

Like vente-privee - a French online shopping site which offers brand name products at discount prices for short periods. I check the site perhaps twice a week but always end up staying on it for twenty or so minutes.

I know living alone during the week is probably the reason for all this, and also the undeniable geekiness which flows through my veins.

I would like to go cold turkey for a day, but I just don't know if I could stand being out of contact with cyberland that long. Am I sick? I'm sure there will soon be facebook anonymous groups where people can go who are totally addicted. I'm just glad it's blocked on work computers, funny that I never miss it there. Ooo, just a minute, I've got a new text message...