Virtual Chafing

Final thought before I retire for the night.

I want to talk about chafing.

Virtual chafing.

This is when all the little inputs you have: the Skype, the Gmail, the POP3 inboxes in Thunderbird (or Outlook or whatever), the Flickr, the RSS feeds, the voicemails and calls on the home phone, the voicemails and calls and text messages on the cellphone, the Tivo ever-flowing with a bounty of Simpsons, Olbermann and Seinfeld, the daily journal, the daily affirmations, the daily instant messaging, the daily workout journal all adds up in little small doses to start to wear away at your patience, you read the same story across Digg, MeFi, Del.icio.us, Furl, Techmeme and you start to wonder why you can’t remember to go pick up toilet paper on the way home because you were too busy thinking about the implications of always-on consumer-generated media combined with mobile/wireless media and a penchant for 24-7 voyeurism. And your private ActiveCollab team space is packed full of tasks that get a day older every 24 hours.

You get snippy.

You get short with people and IM conversations consist of as few keystrokes as possible.

When new media and instant global anything are less like mentholated foot powder (or citrus mint shampoo) and more like your virtual thighs rubbing together, it might be time to unplug. Actually maybe instead of your thighs rubbing together think about your brain lobes rubbing together – too much friction – too much traction.

I was thinking out loud to a colleague that it’d be fun to just go underground for a while.


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2 responses to “Virtual Chafing”

  1. Jen Avatar

    Here I was thinking “it’s just me” or “Mercury is in retrosomethingorother” – My brain starts to go into this perpetual, bogged-down, slow and heavy, wading through molasses *thing*
    I try to break free for an hour or two, but the damage has been done, and when I come back it only takes a half hour to get back to where I was. The problem compounds. I probably need a solid 24 hour break.
    If I could just get my dogs to take care of projects while I relax in the backyard on a reclined lawn chair it would be SO easy!
    Ah, to be one of those mountain people. And live on a mountain. Doing mountain-y things and being in the fresh air all Heidi style. That would be great! (until I had to pee and there was no plumbing, cause then it wouldn’t be great anymore.)

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