Dalmatians

I spent all morning filling out insurance papers trying to claim something out of the accident a month ago. A month and a bit. Regardless, I felt like an old lady sitting at my desk with a tea and paperwork in front of me. All the while one of my roommates played Elvis Presley downstairs. Ironic.

Anyway, since I am Facebookless I have been doing this more often and I flew through the first season of Modern Family in record time. I find that I open my laptop and automatically just want to be clicking something. Bare with me here, but I’m about to correlate my addiction to cigarettes to Facebook. A friend of mine and I were discussing how sometimes when it has been a few hours in the office we both get the itch for a smoke, science says its the nicotine, but we say that it is almost 80% of the time the act of lighting up and hip to mouth motion that is puffing away on cancer. The physical action is involved in the craving. This brings me back to everyone’s (myself included) Facebook addiction. The act of just click from person to person, picture to picture, etc. is just automatic. Creeping has become installed in us. Anyone who used to be anti-Facebook now has it, and not only that but they are creepier then the biggest creeps I know. I got off it for a while because I needed a break and I became very aware of the index finger spasm that seemed to be instinctual and installed within my muscle memory.

I figure maybe if I get used to not going on it for a while I may spend less time on it when I do get it back. Plus, I have four roommates so I really am not concerned about staying in the social loop. Anyway, to get my methadone dosage of clicking I have turned to Stumble Upon like it is my job. Although, with this search engine I actually just read a lot online about art and less about who is going to what kegger and what friend of mine threw up at the bar. Enlightening, I know.

Yesterday I was at the hospital because a family member of a friend was not well. While I sat there along with her sister and her sister’s friend I looked at all four of us and noticed that we all had our phones out and were texting other people. We were in a waiting room, had each other, right there, right next to one another, and still we were texting people who were out God knows where doing other things maybe even with other people too. I threw up a little. I am so guilty of this that if you know me you are probably shaking your head right now and saying “as if she is going to preach about this” but there is really something to be said about what is going on.

It’s been pointed out by many people a million times but sometimes when I break it down for myself and see how obsessed our generation is with constantly being consumed it makes my skin crawl. We can’t walk to school, ride the bus, be in class, or sit in a waiting room without texting someone, listening to music, Facebooking, playing games, E-mailing, BBMing, using Stumble, blogging, and the list goes on. And isn’t it sad? I remember I had brought home someone I was seeing last year to meet my parents and see where I was from. While I was downtown I decided to meet up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while to introduce him to. Naturally, we started reminiscing about high school and talking about people we knew and since he knew no one who were talking about he just instinctively pulled out his Blackberry and started playing Solitaire. Which by the way was a common occurrence. It usually bothered me but what bothered me more at this time was that instead of at least pretending to be interested or asking questions, listening to stories, whatever- this was a modern social cue to just look at his cell phone. Common courtesy is dead. And so is pretending to be interested.

I do it too. When you feel awkward and apparently can’t socially participate in whatever is going on, whipping out your phone and doing whatever on it is second nature. I guess what I’m getting at is that it is just frustrating when it is a time when it isn’t the best solution. My friends kinda questioned him from there on in, and were a little disappointed at the lack of interest he was showing. All I’m getting at is that maybe this new way of life that has become so normal to us sometimes requires a little questioning and little self control so as to not slip away from reality. Just saying. I know I’m a hypocrite.