Breaking the addiction

You've probably noticed my recent lapse in faithfulness to my blog.

Here at Ellerslie, some things I have really had to fight (sleep, for instance), but other things have just evaporated without any effort at all.

I have been addicted to the computer ever since....whew, I don't even know. We had a Commodore 64 when I was like...10...that we were allowed to play for 30 minutes a day, so I guess it has been since then. Haha... what was the name of that game with the caveman on a stone unicycle? He had to jump over stones and duck under stalactites in caves. There was a place where you had to cross a lake by jumping on the backs of turtles...I thought I was amazing for figuring that out!

When we got our first Windows computer, we got a game called The Incredible Machine, and we spent hours figuring out the puzzles on that.

A couple of upgrades later, with cooler games like Chip's Challenge, and Freddie Fish, we got access to the internet, and I loved email! As I got older, the computer games were replaced by reading things online, and I could spend hours with my eyes glued to the screen. That was before facebook and YouTube even existed!

I went to Betel and suddenly I could only get on my computer once a week. That was practically like starvation! I probably spent an average of 3-4 hours a day on my computer before that, and it was astonishing to see how much time I had in my day when "computer" suddenly was no longer an item on my schedule.

But when I got back from Betel, I went right back to my old habits. As long as I couldn't, I didn't, but as soon as I could, I did.

Here at Ellerslie, we have internet hours from 3:30 to 5:30, and for the first month, I used the entire two hours every day to get on my computer. I wasn't doing anything bad. I was updating my blog and emailing. I was hardly ever on facebook, and I wasn't just mindlessly surfing. But I had to have my internet time.

I was working really hard to get pageviews on my blog. Every day I would be sure to post something, and every day I looked to see how many pageviews I got. I entered the number on Excel and made a bunch of graphs tracking my daily pageviews and average weekly pageviews.

But somehow, my interest in my blog, my email, and even getting on my computer at all just diminished. It waned and flickered and suddenly I realized I didn't care if I got online that day or not. Somehow it didn't matter if I missed a day posting to my blog. I was fine with my diminishing pageviews (this week was my worst week since the beginning of June).

For some reason, without me even trying, my tentacles have unstuck from their clutching grasp on the computer. I have computer time and I don't take it. For me, that is unheard of. What in the world is going on?

I guess God is just breaking my addiction. This is going to be a big help.