What is this World Wide Web anyway…?
The Internet is a wonderful world – it is a library, a circle of friends, a village, a cinema, a venue, a school, a source of ideas and information right on your desk at home.
The Internet is also totally crap – it is out of date, slow, annoying, inaccurate and unreliable. It presents fragments of everything, and little in complete form. It is a place of mass projection and pretence.
The Internet is like most media marketplaces before it. Newspaper stands, TV stations bookstores, even – gasp – the Ap store… are filled with “stuff” that actually means very little.
What is the problem with this? We have no problem with “stuff” being produced for commercial gain – a) we are doing it ourselves, and b) private people doing things is, in the vast majority of cases throughout history, how things have gotten done. We have no problem with people generating their own “stuff” even if it is crap or contributes very little. But the problem is – unlike the Newspaper stand, the TV station and the bookstore; here in Internet land the “stuff” is generated by you and me. Our lives are going in to it.
What possible reckoning is there for the hours we Internet-lovers spend in front of the small screen? The second you move in to an even slightly professional interest (and lets face it – most of us straddle in-between) you become a little obsessional – are my keywords up (weight-loss, weight-loss, weight-loss)? How are we ranking today? What are my re-tweets? How many likes did I get this month?
Is any of this real?
Here is an exercise in getting-a-grip recently undertaken by the Dark Mistress… I looked at myself naked.
Strip your gear off and look at yourself physically, and then step closer to the mirror and look yourself in the eye and see what’s in there too. You are not your avatar.
I am not full of self-loathing, but somewhere between work and World Wide Web, I have forgotten my embodied reality.
This blog therefore, is about rediscovering the embodied life – finding balance between self and avatar. For me this means fitness, weight-loss, stress relief, general grip-getting, and more than the occasional dig at life on the World Wide Web.
Are you a web junkie? Send us your confessional…
Yours,
The Dark Mistress
The Balance Blog – A reflection on virtual life versus embodied life; ostensibly finding sunshine, holistic fitness, natural weight-loss and stress relief for an obsessed workaholic screen addict, with the occasional dig at the World Wide Web.
