My Brain Has Been Rewired

I'm convinced that excessive computer usage has rewired my brain, and maybe yours, too. And not in a good way.

Yesterday morning I got up and of course (!) checked Facebook before I even had coffee. I was surprised at how many other people had posted that they were already up and had been unable to sleep. I'd had another unsatisfying night, myself. After going to bed I'd been bothered by restless leg syndrome (previously only experienced in times of extreme stress). I had to get up around midnight, take a hot bath and a Tylenol PM in order to get some rest, and I was still the first one up in my house the next morning. Also on the subject of sleeping/not sleeping: twice this past week I've dreamed of web surfing.

At work at my regular job, I check my office email over and over and over, a million times a day. I could set it to automatically notify me; but no, I'd rather obsess. In short moments of downtime, such as when I'm waiting for my printer to spit something out, I check my personal email or look at Facebook or hit a website for whatever topic has crossed my mind in the last few minutes. (My mother-in-law has mentioned that she can never think of anything she wants to look up. To me this is incomprehensible. I can't STOP thinking of things I want to look up.)

Saddest of all, and I've heard this expressed by other readers, is that my relationship with books has been altered. Books have been the love of my life and until the past year or two, I dove into them and easily became absorbed. But lately I find it much more difficult. At present I'm reading a new book--one I had long looked forward to--by a favorite author, and instead of savoring the beautiful prose I'm impatient for the story to get moving, already, and show me some action. I still do pretty well when I return to favorite books from the past, but NEW characters and stories have their work cut out for them, trying to wrest my attention away from this magic screen in front of me.

It's almost as though we've conditioned ourselves to have ADD. No longer is it a way of life to concentrate on one thing at a time; EVERY job description uses the term "multi-task." We go through our days trying to do one main thing while flipping back every few minutes (seconds?) to another. I find this all disturbing. You?

Ruby Slippers

When my daughter Bliss was little, Target used to sell sparkly jewel-encrusted red shoes that reminded me of the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Every time I went in the store I would look at them and think how thrilled she would be if I bought her some. But then I'd think, Don't be frivolous. That's ten dollars, or whatever, that could be spent on something more practical.

A hundred times I looked at them, a hundred times I never bought them.

Eventually Bliss got too old to be delighted by such things as ruby slippers from Target. And then one day I realized that I would never in my whole life have another little girl to buy them for.

Moral of the story: that's ten bucks I should have spent.