Well, I did it! I went several hours without checking my e-mail!
No applause, please. (Humble smile) Just leave congratulatory comments at the bottom of this post. (Eyes twinkle mischievously)
For anyone who didn’t read between the lines in my last post (and I quote: “My goal for today is to check my e-mails less and to check in with God more often”), here’s the explanation:
I have become an e-mail addict.
It’s pathetic but it’s true; I check my e-mail several hundred times a day.
(Not really, but I wanted to get your attention.)
In part, it’s all your fault. The comments you so sweetly leave on my blog go directly to my inbox. I know most of you already know this—the Blogger ladies do, anyway—but I’d be curious to know if it’s the same with Typepad.
Anyway.
Generally speaking, I post in the morning before the little ones descend. And then, during breakfast prep, I’ll check to see if I’ve gotten any comments. It’s too easy to do, really. The computer’s right there on the counter.
When I have received a comment, it’s like: instant affirmation! It feels good! You like me!You really like me!
It’s an extroverted, attention-craving thing. I’ve had it since I was a kid.
Most days, I can keep my need for approval in check. Or rather, God and I can.
But on some days I place too much emphasis on the comments.
I start to worry a bit too much about them.
And then, when they are slow-to-come to this very impatient blogger, the dark cloud can descend.
“My post was dumb. Even worse, no one but my mom came by to read it. No, wait. My mom doesn’t have a computer.” I start to feel sad and lonely.
It’s insidious and very insecure of me but there you have it.
For a person prone to rapid swings of emotion (read: me) the comment box can be like a little Hallmark greeting. Yay! Another friend has come to call! Temperament-wise I’m a weird blend of sanguine & melancholy. Extremely outgoing but a bit too sensitive for my own good.
Not surprisingly, I’m seeing the same blend of temperament in some of my children. My 4th grade son (4th grade!) has developed a slight case of “comment envy”. His little blog is very sweet and it gets him writing, which is the whole point. But he has started to compare himself to his mom a bit and even asked if he could start another blog for his “recipes.”
My son, God love him, doesn’t cook.
Or bake.
But he does like keeping a blog, like his mom. And he’s super excited when he gets comments, just…like…mom.
Just like everybody, probably. I can ask the rhetorical question: is checking your e-mail a problem for you also? But then that’d be fishing for a comment, wouldn’t it.
In her book The Well-Educated Mind, Susan Wise Bauer reflects on the distracting qualities of e-mail.
“If you get good news, you’re distracted by it; if someone writes you a nasty note, you’ll spend the next forty-five minutes mentally formulating blistering replies rather than concentrating… If no one writes at all, you’ll be depressed because you’ve suddenly become invisible in cyberspace.”
The problem with worrying about the comments in one’s box is that you lose the peace you had in publishing. Odds are, you’ve written something beautiful and heart-felt and helpful, and there are plenty of lurkers who needed to hear exactly what you’ve written.
They just don’t tell you.
But if the devil can make you lose your peace about it, great. He shoots! He scores!
Well, for me all this is clearly something I need to work on. Today was just such a day. It was Friday; I needed some penance. I set as my goal no internet or e-mail until dusk.
It was hard. I slipped a couple of times in the morning.
But then by grace I was able to abstain throughout the afternoon.
It was very peaceful. 😉
What’s more, I am now happy to say that by the end of the day I:
1. Wrote a thank-you note
2. Trimmed back the dead petunias in the flower boxes
3. Basked in the unexpected beauty of a 60 degree-plus day
4. Had tea & oranges with my girls on the deck
5. Thought fondly of the people who have left such sweet comments on my blog and said a prayer for them. Is that cute or is that weird? Whatever it was, it got me past the delirium tremors.
6. Flung a football at my sons & tried to catch it on the rebound (Is “rebound” even a football word?)
7. And most important of all: I focused…on…my family.
A homeschooling mother’s day can be rigorous at best and purely purgatorial at worst. I would love to read about how you other mothers deal with the stress. Because when the boys start fighting & the girls start whining & the papers need grading & the toddler goes off on another diaper-filling, marker-eating, coffee-cup-dumping rampage, I am tempted and usually do turn to a quick fix.
Quick as in a coffee.
“Come to me, all you who labor…”
Quick as in a chocolate.
“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…”
Quick as in a few quick clicks on the computer.
“Mary has chosen the better portion and I will not take it from her.”
I love comments. Who doesn’t? They are sweet and so affirming. They are like cyber-smiles that lift the spirit and are a gift.
I just need to be careful not to love the gifts more than the Giver.
PS. Having been a blogger for not so very long a time, I must beg your pardon if you have seen (or written!) a post like this a hundred times already.
Congratulations! Sounds like you had a marvelous day!
Now I should confess…I suffer from the very same addiction! I’m so glad to hear I’m not the only one.
I wonder if there’s a 12 step program for people like us? 😉
Perhaps if we evened you and I out; I could remember to swing by each day and you could feel no compulsion to check incessantly. In any case, mea culpa for the times I “lurked” and didn’t tell you how sweet it was to see my dear friend and feel a part of your and your children’s day. Love from now snowy Anchorage.
Thank you for making me laugh.
I have a 12 step program for Melissa (actually, it’s 1 step): Have your husband start upgrading, changing, etc. every computer in your house. You won’t have any choice but to limit your computer time. I know because my husband did this recently. It felt very freeing to me
I think you are my long lost twin. This part really hit home:
“Temperament-wise I’m a weird blend of sanguine & melancholy. Extremely outgoing but a bit too sensitive for my own good.”
That’s me, to a tee. I have found that I have been checking my blog all the time to check for comments, and get depressed or think I’ve said something uninteresting and that I really shouldn’t be blogging anyways…
I’d love to chat with you sometime. I think we’d have alot in common, and could pray for each other.
God Bless you and that post. I really, REALLY needed to read it.
Hi Margaret,
I have to admit, I did not leave any comments yesterday, because I didn’t want to “tempt” you and I, too, love to check blogs!! On days when I do not have much time, I do always make sure to check yours and one other, plus any emails, and this can easily take a 1/2 hr! Weekends, and evenings, my husband is on the computer, so time is more limited and sometimes I only check once, it is freeing…the world survived without me checking!! It is wonderful though, isn’t it? We all have this common thing, our faith, our motherhood, we are instantly friends, yet we’ve never met. (try to explain that to someone who does not check blogs, it really sounds crazy) Of course I try to get others to join this obsession because it’s so wonderful. We are truly “real” friends, we pray for eachother, we feel for eachother, we inspire eachother, we love eachother.
We are so blessed to live in this time and age when we can find so much support. Yes there is a lot of bad out there, but this is the perfect example of something great and wonderful.
Thank you Margaret, for always being there for me to check! I “fasted” on the computer, or from the computer yesterday, SO thanks to you Margaret, hopefully some souls in purgatory were saved. You planted the seed. God Bless you Margaret.
I too love comments and sometimes obsess over my obsession with having them or not (nobody left a comment…wasn’t I funny?…why should I care if nobody left a comment? I don’t always leave comments on other people’s pages…who am I writing this blog for anyway? Am I so narcisstic that I need feedback to justify my writing?).
I usually don’t have time to leave comments everywhere I’d like – I’m sure you don’t either. So I do more drive-by readings than anything. I REALLY liked your post about the Thin Red Line, and would have commented, but you already had tons of love on that one!
I agree that like other indulgences (caffeine and chocolate) blog comments can be addicting but also comforting. Moderation seems to be the key, and we all need to find the appropriate balance! Now…off to real life!
Margaret,
I predict that you will:
a. get a flood of sympathy comments,
or,
b. get fewer-than-the-usual comments because people don’t want to admit sharing the same addiction. 🙂
I too wrote about my fear and trembling at the loss of internet connection back in September … it was tongue in cheek, but I think we bloggers all share that love of the Inbox, and the addiction to comments.
We disguise it with socially acceptable talk of things such as “balance.” 😉
Oh, Michelle, we were posting comments simultaneously, and I just now saw yours. Now it looks like I was mocking your “balance” comment, but I wrote it before I read yours! I didn’t want you to think it was in direct response to you! 🙂
Truly — though I was saying it with a wink — it IS a matter of balance. Yes, we all probably check comments too much some days, but then we pull back and ponder what’s truly important, if it’s getting out of hand, if we’re being narcissistic, etc.
If that’s the case for me, then I pull back from the computer for a day and just have loads more coffee.
(Just kidding ….)
Okay, Margaret, here’s my confession:
I check your blog about 10 times a day to see what you’ve posted and the comments. I live vicariously through you. I know – weird, huh?
I (in my sin of envy) read every post and comment, thinking, “Ah, how I wish I could write like that, or I wish I could say that so eloquently…” I don’t comment everytime because I’m afraid people would think I’m obsessed as I am!
I do check my email about 4 days a week. I used to be much worse and check it a lot more when the computer was more accessible to me. Since the school room (and my computer) have moved to the basement family room, I don’t check and it’s been really good for me.
On the upside, Tina and I were just commenting about how we THOUGHT we knew you until we read all these terribly interesting things in your blog. You swam with Fungi? I’m so jealous! So, don’t stop. Even those of us who think we know you, learn more and LOVE YOU MORE with each word we read!
Love you and still owe you a birthday dinner!
Oops – reread my post..I check email 4 times a day…was distracted by a toddler playing wih my mouse!
A couple more comments and we’ll have one person for each step of the 12-step program Melissa proposed! 🙂
You ladies are beautiful. E-mail me if you need to talk more. If it’s not Friday, I’ll answer right away!
Have a blessed, blessed weekend.
Yes, addicted here as well. I love your blog and it I ever don’t comment it’s only because I can’t think of anything worthy enough to have you spend your time reading it. I loved the monkey post. And if I only get a couple of comments I have the same “No one likes me!! The previous comments I got were probably just PITY comments. They are all just pretending to like me!” But I’m not with you. I really do love my daily visit to Minnesota.
I am in a bad habit of checking email, too. I think Helen at Castle of the Immaculate chooses to not take comments so as to remain humble, and give credit to God. I don’t know if I could that!
When I’m out of town and can’t check the computer, I’m fine. I don’t go into withdrawal, and I get more done. Catching up on the blogs is hard…and then I don’t leave comments because I can’t read and leave comments for 3-4 days worth!
I think I might put my computer on standby mode so it takes longer to check, so I won’t be tempted as much for the fly-by peeks.
Margaret! This is a fantastic post! Yesterday (or was it today?) I was just thinking back to my own blogging angst and the trial by fire I went through. I remembered your kind comments to me and your link to my “total perspective vortex” post. Honestly, I wondered if you (the interesting and wonderful woman that you are, the great writer that you are) could relate to the feeling of being a blip in the blog-o-sphere … Thank you for “coming clean” and revealing a whole lot of truth not only about yourself but about the challenges we all face in this blogging adventure! God bless you and your day, Sweetie! :o)
Wow. Thank you for all your comments, Ladies! (Now is that remark tongue-in-cheek or what?!)
Before I close the polls on this particular post, I did want to share a couple more reflections.
First, I think that God is at work here! The computer can be a stronghold in our lives. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: we did not choose to homeschool because we lack ambition, that’s for certain! It’s what we do with that ambition, though, that is always in need of re-alligning.
Second, I laughed out loud when I read Karen’s first comment; my husband said the exact same thing!! (Is this a reflection on the similarity your temperaments?) It wasn’t funny when he first said it, though. I labored long & hard before I hit “publish” because it was such a sensitive subject. I really really really didn’t want to come across as fishing for comments. Honesty was my goal.
Finally, having said ALL this, I will say that I’m trying to be better about leaving comments on other people’s blogs because I know how good it can be for the spirit to know that someone has stopped by. And these are not “pity” comments, Jennifer!;) They come your way with much love.
Have a blessed day, everyone!
A bit of a lurker(pan to HS next year) … love your blog!
I am the same way. I think that I need the special controls to limit my computer time. It is amazing that in real life we don’t always look for recognition in all that we say, but when we take the time to write it, we CRAVE the attention.
Elaine (Mom to 5 girls)
http://www.momto5minnies.vox.com/
Dear Margaret,
I wouldn’t consider myself a “blogger”, but, I have to tell you that I just look forward to what you write every morning. You have a very real, yet creative way of putting life in perspective. God has given you a talent, please share! You even have my better half peering over my shoulder when I visit your site. Maybe he’s looking for that “blackmail” photo!
Have a splendid day!