It started yesterday. I was at the bookstore with my girlfriend and I was looking around and I said to myself “I love books!” It’s the texture, it’s the shapes and sizes and all the different variations. Then I wandered over to the blank book section where I began feeling through all the leather bound books. A true touching experience.

I’ve been itching for the real world again. As I said in my last post I pulled out my stereo system and hooked up my speakers last night and my intention is to get myself a nice turntable when I can. The desire to hear the warm tones of an analog audio format.

For the last twelve years or so my life has rotated around my computer. It’s my everything machine. I browse the web, I watch movies, I listen to music, I create digital art and manipulate my photos with it. If there is something I need to know I go to my computer. If I want to communicate with friends, I go to my computer. If I want to get my feelings out, I go to my computer (and Xanga on it).

I’m tired of it. I know it will always be a staple in my life. But I need a serious injection of the analog world. The real world. Maybe that’s where my current fascination with paper bound books and analog vinyl records has come from. A need and desire to balance out the digital world I somehow seem to have drifted further and further into over the years. 

I go to work and most days I’m on a computer for nine hours. I come home and I’m on a computer most of the night. When I think about it, most of my life is spent focused on a computer screen and there is something really sad about that.

Balance is required. As my grandmother used to say “Everything in moderation.” Of course she didn’t really mean “everything.”

I think a lot of us have gotten stuck in the situation I’m in though. The world has always been expensive but it seems like it’s gotten even more expensive lately. As an adult it’s hard to find something fun and interesting to do that doesn’t cost money. Maybe that’s why we all just sit around on our computers all the time or overwork ourselves. All the land is owned. You can’t just run out and play a field anymore. At best you can pay to get into a state park. If you have a hobby, it requires money for supplies. Maybe not, maybe I’m just complaining and need to be more imaginative. But it just seems like everything costs something these days and one of the cheapest forms of entertainment is the internet. Hence the reason so many of us find our lives swallowed up by it.

Time to break out. Balance out. As much as I can.