Seems like a small lifetime's come and gone since my last post, so much has happened or so it seems like. Or maybe it's just me and my perspectives on things. One happenstance being that I've realised how badly addicted I am to the internet. Ok I've known that for a while but never really wanted to own up to it. But it took something devastating in my personal life recently to shock me out of my complacency and realise how my Net addiction has eaten up huge chunks of my time and life. Most damagingly, I've realised how far away I've drifted from the Lord and that hasn't been simply because I sit for hours on end before the computor but in what goes on in that time. I know some of you probably imagine I surf a lot of porn. Hah, if only. No, my favourite online activity for these many years has been chatting and making friends with people I'd never have got to know otherwise. I started out hanging out in MIRC chatrooms, then graduated on to forums, and that was where I think the rot set in. There are so many different kinds of people online as there are offline obviously - some decent, normal, God-fearing folks, some plain antagonistic towards any kind of religious talk, and some, the most dangerous kind I now think, are those who are quite normal, ordinary, fun-loving, nice, everyday folks, born and brought up in Christian homes but have no religious/spiritual personal beliefs or experiences, and so tend to rationalize everything from a logical point of view. Looking back, I know for certain that's where I began to lose my rock solid beliefs and my faith began eroding.
Deaddiction, I've found, is incredibly tough. I've bought a book called Breaking Everday Addictions by a Dr. David Hawkins, which I'd picked up and glanced through idly several months ago but didn't think necessary to actually buy. Obviously it's a huge step forward that I bought the book and am reading it - accepting the fact that you have an addiction and want to reclaim your life being the first requirement. I quote from the book: "Besides taking us away from ourselves, addictions take us away from God. Every hour we spend sitting in front of the computor screen or gazing mindlessly at the slot machine or even texting friends is time we are not spending with God. Gambling and Internet addictions take us away from the real world and an important part of that real world is our relationship with God. Breaking the bonds of addiction therefore must include a conscious decision to increase our contact with God - we must be deliberate about making time for God in our lives."
As I said earlier, it's tough getting deaddicted and I'm only just starting out. But I've also found small ways of getting even, if you can call it that, by consciously making time for God in my online activities by being more careful in the people I interact with and the things I read online. Every little bit helps.
