Logging off?

My name is Phil and I have an addiction.

Not one of the obvious ones, though. Sorry, this is not going to be that sort of post. I've never inhaled. Never been offered, for that matter. Honestly, I had a very sheltered upbringing. I was brought up in a cul-de-sac. I was 17 before I saw another human nipple.

No, in my case, my addiction is something so much more..21st century. I am addicted to the Internet.

See, I even have to use the capital 'I'. That's how bad I've got it.

As far as I know, there are a million-and-one things you can do with a computer these days. But whenever I switch one on, it's the same thing. The muscle memory kicks in and I'm opening up Firefox to look at something suitably random, without even thinking about it. I can't help it.

It started many years ago, on 56k dial-up and a Tiny computer, which was, ironically, the size of a locomotive. Most nights it was a case of dialling and re-dialling to get a connection. It was difficult to get going. But I was hooked, nevertheless. A few years later broadband came about, giving me that instant hit. Then laptops, then wireless, then more speed.

Most nights I'm like a sailor on shore-leave. Actually, that's not a good analogy. I don't look so good in white, for starters. There are more websites out there than there are people. And yet I end up on the same few dozen. (Before you ask, nothing like that. Remember the cul-de-sac thing above?)

But I've realised that this is no way forwards. Refreshing my Facebook page every 30 seconds is just not a healthy way for a grown-up to behave. There are books out there unread. And none of them require me to slide a finger down the front to switch them on. There are some things I'd like to write that are a bit more than 300 words of bloggery. And yes, that is a word if I say so myself.

So I'm going to try and ration myself. I hear there are applications you can download that restrict your Internet access. But finding them would involve more surfing, and that's just silly. There is such a thing as an 'off' switch, after all.

Of course, it's only me who's going cold turkey. I fully expect you to keep using the Internet on a regular basis. I hear some of the blogs out there are outstanding, for instance.