Social Psych

Name:
Location: Santa Ana, California, United States

Virginia Bola operated a rehabilitation company for 20 years, developing innovative job search techniques for disabled workers, while serving as a Vocational Expert in Administrative, Civil and Workers' Compensation Courts. She is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics and an admitted diet fanatic. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of two interactive workbooks, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual and Diet With An Attitude: A Weight Loss Workbook, she also publishes a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge and various weight loss mini-courses. She can be reached at http://www.DietWithAnAttitude.com/index2.html, http://www.UnemploymentBlues.com, or http:www.VirginiaBola.com.

Monday, July 18, 2005

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.