Life Beyond The Internet.

Am I letting the Internet take over my life?

I sit here on my one day off this week and think about how I have spent the last three or four months of my life.

Except for the time I put into my regular job, all of my attention has been focused on my computer. I even eat at my desk while continuing to work. In February, I learned how to create a mini-site and had one up by March. I tried all kinds of advertising, paid and unpaid, ordered every report that promised the skills, equipment, and "secrets" to put me over the top. I joined every group, newsletter, list builder, traffic exchange and affiliate program that I could find. I kept writing articles and completed an e-book. Then I put up a second mini-site and went through the whole process again.

Today I came up for air to assess how I was doing. I made a couple of sales here and there but only drummed up a dribble of interest. I am so impatient - I want results immediately, sales right now. I read this morning in one of my hundreds of e-mails, that even the big earners on the net had to develop their income streams over two or three years. That makes a lot of sense if you don't get distracted (as I was) by the claims to "Put $200 in your pocket in the next two hours," or "Make $58,168 your first month."

How gullible we all are when we set out with starry eyes, intending to make a major splash in the electronic firmament. So I'm going to gear back. The processes I have put in place will keep on churning without my constant watch.

I need to get away from the shrill voices and e-mails of the Internet gurus who promise that if I buy just one more report, one more software system, join one more venture, I'll have it made for life. I am sick of the deception, the manipulation, and the downright lies of the professional marketers. I am equally revolted by the overly slick come-ons and the amateurish, unending e-mails from folks who can barely string a decent sentence together trying to convince me that they are making a fortune by sending out their monstrosities of sales letters.

I am white with fatigue at the letters from relatives and bank officials in remote African nations offering me millions and the phony notices of holographic lottery winnings for which I have been randomly selected.

I need to regain my perspective and my balance. I want to spend some quiet time a long way away from any kind of computer. I am going to reconnect with nature, enjoy the sun, walk along the ocean, and run my bare feet through the long grass.

We have reduced this wonderful, awe-inspiring planet of ours to the gaudy screen of a computer and the flicker of a television set. We are like Plato's cave dwellers, watching the dancing shadows and believing that we are actually seeing life.