Strategically Communicating

I felt self-conscious from the moment I started recording my media consumption this past week, mostly because I began examining the necessity of burying myself in electronics when there was a real, live world at my fingertips where I could actually be present. There were conversations to have, plans to make, and walks to take.

While this was not the goal of the monitoring exercise, my recreational media use trailed off significantly as the week went by.

I was also slightly freaked out by Henry Jenkins’ description of the Survivor spoilers; wondering how anyone can make a living when he spends so much time online. Do they still find time to eat fresh food and do laundry when they are so obsessed with their research?

I try to keep my phone and Internet use in check. Like most people, though, I have a really hard time being disconnected, feeling like there is a ball dropping somewhere and sure it was my fault. I have two young kids, work full time, and find it’s pretty much physically impossible to keep up with all of my email. I typically triage the time-sensitive messages and perform *inbox clean up* during crazy vampire hours, staying up until 1 a.m. to purge messages and respond (with apologies) to important email I’ve overlooked. The media monitoring exercise pointed out that is not healthy.  I’ll tackle a solution. Tips are welcome.

By the way…Did you know ChillOne wrote a book and did an interview in Reality News Online?