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I am an Internet potato. (Mashed. And also fried.)
Are you always online? Does work take longer because you see that your friend sent you a David Hasselhoff cd via the German gifts Facebook application and you look up 20 minutes later no closer to deadlines met but having sent sauerbraten to 227 friends? (Or maybe that's just me.)
It’s amazing how easy it is to find time when we cut out all the
wasteful and pointless things we do with our time. Take surfing the net
for example. This has now become one of the biggest time consuming
activities in our society. The couch potato has been replaced by the
internet potato. How many hours are wasted drifting from one site to
another?Cut out pointless surfing and you will suddenly discover that you
have hours of spare time to use in productive activity. Then there’s
that traditional time wasting activity, watching television for hour
after hour. One program after another; hypnotized by the screen in the
corner.
My inertia is overwhelming, I admit it, for reasons Internet-related and otherwise. I would love to write this post from the perspective of a rah-rah, raring to go, look at me, I'm an exercise superhero person who's back from the farmer's market before my loved ones are even awake.
But I'm not, and this isn't fiction, so I can't. Instead I write this post from my bed, drinking a bloody Mary and eating pistachio nuts, because I just had to put the remnants of fresh fruit that I once again failed to eat before it spoiled down the disposal. (I did eat yogurt though. Does that count?)
Yes, I am ridiculous, and yes, I believe it needs to stop. I can count the times I've been to the gym since I began graduate school in 2007 on less than one hand. Not a structure magician in the best of times, my schedule imploded, a few times over. I spent a lot of time running around but none of it felt terribly productive, and because I was studying multimedia journalism, the boundaries between online and real life grew incredibly blurry. And when I did get home? The laptop snapped open - again - and back to working mindlessly surfing the Web until deadlines snapped at my heels - I went.
Needless to say, I gained weight, which seemed incredibly unfair because I felt like I was running a daily marathon and a lot of times I felt melodramatically like I was STARVING, when really I was in denial about the amount of caffeine, salt and fake sugar a late 30-something body can consume before turning into carbon with a side of hydrogenated whatever oil. I didn't get enough sleep, ever, ever, ever. I talked a lot of nonsense. I have no idea what my blood pressure is, but I should probably find out.
Now, diploma in hand and back to my regular job, you'd think I'd be better. But given the choice between putting on my cross-trainers and walking for an hour on an unseasonably pretty day, or sitting on my ass edifying my Facebook friends with yet another 25 things about myself while procrastinating on the important work of telling you that I'm an Internet potato? Let's just say: #14: The song stuck in my head is - sorry, Denise - Beyonce's Single Ladies.
(Have you actually listened to the words besides "put a ring on it"? The part where she demands that you "put your hands up"? She's trying to kill me.)
I'm not sure this internet potato-ness has so much to do with me being single as it does with me being inherently fond of leisure while also singularly set in my routines once they form - especially the bad, lazy ones that mean no exercise and another dinner of Whole Foods olive bar, crackers and brie in front of the Biggest Loser and Twitter (which I'm sure has caused a ten-pound weight gain alone. Twitter, you...witch.)
Yes, if I had children I would need to get up with them and shuttle them around everywhere. But the thing is, I should get up anyway. And I can totally eat candy and pay attention to my e-mail while shuttling myself, so I'm sure I'd be stealing McNuggets from my children too. I know plenty of single people who run and eat right and are morning people even though there isn't a child involved. I even know
