Hmmpost

It’s our baby’s 16th birthday today, our middle teen graduates in a couple months and I’m feeling the last of my hair graying, but hey, life could be worse. Oh and yes, we’re coming to the end of month number four in rebooting our offline business and I can’t (and wouldn’t anyway) complain there. Positive attitude, karma, all that I believe in. About the only thing I’m disappointed in lately is my online time. I’m feeling out of balance with the stuff I enjoy doing online. Don’t worry friendly readers, I’m not going anywhere and not going to start making excuses for not posting more to the blog. If you see me doing that then this blog has jumped the shark.  I’ll get my writing mojo back in good time. I do have time to sit and write but where I would have been doing that a year ago, I’m now using that time for offline volunteer work in the community. I’m feeling a lot better about my contribution to society in the offline world. As I write this my Google Reader is poised rather serendipitously at 777 items unread.

It’s nice being able to keep that number under 1,000+ and some might recall this was done by unsubscribing from any feed that averaged more than 3 posts a day. I’m happy with how this has kept my reading volume in check, but the negative to this is that I do not feel as connected. Ying, yang. What do you think, is this good or bad? Probably bad for our online business. Maybe bad for both our businesses since one of my 2009 goals was to make our offline business more connected online. So improvement is needed on this front going forward. Balance, balance, balance; the key of life. The online connected drug Being online is like a drug, isn’t it? It’s a bit scary in fact. To become sobered by just how scary online can be just read stories like the alleged Craigslist killer with a women’s panty fetish: Philip Markoff, the accused murderer now known as the "Craigslist Killer," appeared to be collecting women’s panties, which investigators believe were "souvenirs" from his alleged victims, two law enforcement sources told ABC News. The panties, found during a search of Markoff’s house, are one of the reasons investigators believe there could be more victims who have not yet come forward…

It would seem this Markoff guy might have gotten in way over his head with gambling debts. Balance, balance, balance. Or in this guy’s case IF he turns out to be found guilty (and please remember: innocent until proven guilty), imbalance would be the correct word to use. Although I’ve not used enough to judge Craigslist seems like an online service that plenty of normal, sane people use for buying, selling, trading and finding people and things but when you get into large enough numbers online the darker side of humanity is exposed. But enough of the scary side of being online. Let’s focus on the positive side. There are plenty of good reasons to stay more connected online. I’ve tried to keep online time spent in check by reminding myself that it is foremost a work place and secondarily for social interaction and entertainment. Just as I don’t want to spend too much time at the office, I shouldn’t spend excess time online. Even if our internet connection is 24/7, we don’t have to be. Balance, balance, balance. Gone are the days of gadget shopping and multiple weekly trips to Best Buy. I think they miss me judging by the increase in sales-related emails they’ve been sending and in a couple cases phone calls from the store. You know you are shopping too much at a retail store (balance!) when the store starts having withdrawal symptoms. Someday I’ll make time for that stuff again, but I’m happy replacing this with the local Eagles club and working longer and more focused work days. For the most part I’m still taking at least one day a week off and not working late every night so no fear of burning out. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the (good) online stuff. It’s not like missing smoking, which was a habit I managed to shake 23 years ago, but it’s close. To rip a line from Arnie: I’ll be back.