Tuned In and Turned Off

I'm not sure if others struggle with social networking, cellphone, blackberry, ipad/pod/phone, facebook, blog world that we live in. 

I do.

Especially as a stay at home mom. 

It can be lonely; staying home with kids.

And it is tempting to check the email each time I walk by the computer, wondering if someone has sent me a nugget of social interaction. 

Which leads to me responding

or searching on Facebook

or getting lost in a blog hopping.

And pretty soon, the afternoon has slipped away, it's time to make dinner, my children are crabby and I feel

Blah...

That's what playing on a computer does for me.  It leaves me feeling...blah.  And so I don't know why I do it. 

The days that I leave the computer off are the very best.  I leave my day feeling I accomplished something; however, that means that I am even more cut-off socially than I was to start with.

They say, 

 What you put into the lives of others comes back into
your own.

 

So then I turn the computer back on....and get sucked right back in again, replying to FB posts that have replied to me that I then reply to and so on and so forth. Is it just me? Am I a junkie?

I feel horribly uncomfortable with how to balance the new way of keeping up socially with being a mother that is present for and tuned into her children.  As a stay-at-home-mom, I also make a homemade dinner every night, keep up with laundary, keep the house clean (well, kind of, as best I can, sometimes).  All of that must be juggled with being present for my kids...

I recently reactivated my ancient flip-phone; it gives me a sense of comfort in case I have car problems.  I have a pay-as-you-go phone and I don't even know my own number. My phone does not take pictures or connect to the internet. I have no idea how to text.  And I'd like to keep it that way.  For now. Until I figure out this whole balancing technology thing while still being tuned into the world right in front of me.