Community of a Trashed Playroom {when blogging becomes too much}

Too much of a good thing can generally become a bad thing.

This is true of eating chocolate.  And hitting the gym.  And watching YouTube videos from people you’ll never meet.

It is also true of writing blogs and facebook stalking and twittering. {Dangit.}

Because I’ve seen him go to bed resentful.  And I’ve heard them call their mom again, and again, only to hear me say, “Just one more second, really.”  I’ve scrambled with dishes that should have been cleaned and dinners that got overcooked, and I’ve sacrificed sleep and been irritable the next day.

All for the pursuit of connection with a virtual community and more visits to my site and louder applause from my facebook stats.

And a good thing quickly morphs into too much.

I read recently an article about the goodness of an online community.  The author was very accurately talking of how isolating modern life can be for a woman, and that the virtual space can become a source of encouragement and challenge and relationship. I definitely agree that this can be true {and has been true in my own journey thus far}.

But.

But.

Here is the reality.  When I meet with a girlfriend-in-the-flesh at a coffee shop or at a park, we connect, talk, and rescue kids from monkey-bar disasters. And then we part ways.  And we wrestle toddlers into car seats, and then we each hit the grocery store or tackle the laundry at our own homes. Because time with a face-to-face friend has a definitive ending point.

Your real-life friends don’t stare at you while you are fixing dinner, or call to you when you should be playing pretend-pirates with your kids, or ask you to check in two hours past when you should be sleeping.

But your online friends, via that little black computer screen or that iPod in your purse, can invade your space anytime. All the time. And oftentimes, a good thing becomes a consuming force that claims a rung higher on the ladder of priority than you wanted.

And this can become a problem.  A problem which manifests itself in ignored children and dropped responsibilities and fewer dinners with flesh-and-blood families.

Because Community whose faces you recognize via their Gravatar does, most definitely, have value.

But the kind that leaves with you dishes in the sink and a trashed playroom, well, that has a whole mess of value, too.

And maybe I’m alone in my quest for balance in this new world of technology and relationships. But, I don’t think so. How about you?  What have you found is the greatest struggle in keeping your computer time/blogging efforts in balance? Do you need to self-adjust?

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P.S.  After reading some of the comments, I think I need to clarify.  Since I am currently living overseas, the importance of staying connected with my family and friends via the web is vital.  Absolutely.  I was speaking in this post mainly about my own tendency to become technologically consumed in other blog-related realms.

Tagged as: balance, blogging