I'm an addict. An e-addict.

I need to confess something.

I’m addicted to the internet.

Checking e-mail becomes a 3-hour episode of “let’s look at everyone’s pictures on facebook.” Looking up a song to add to my repertoire becomes five hours of watching cats jump in boxes.

It sounds funny. It is kind of funny, but I find myself completely exhausted and kind of disillusioned about my ability to do anything.

I lose time, and time is precious when you’re a guitar teacher naturalist singer-songwriter choir director. So there’s that.

There’s also the notion that I don’t actually like being on the internet. I’m a tree-hugger, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t actually like sitting in front of a glowing screen all day. So it’s kind of bizarre that glowing screens can so easily ensnare me.

And then there’s the environmental side that I’m thinking of. Not so much my own computer – most personal computers these days are getting pretty energy-efficient. What I’m thinking of is the internet in general. How much electricity does it take to keep all these servers going, all the time, 24/7, and to air-condition the buildings they’re kept in? (They have to be air-conditioned, otherwise they could run too hot.)

I’ve got a general idea that each site or service has its own set of servers, and I vaguely understand that the more activity a site or service has, the more servers it needs. But I don’t get much beyond that, if there is anything about that.

The most electronics-deficient I’ve ever been was in Alaska. We had 20 minutes of satellite phone time a week. We also had a laptop that we’d use to input our data. We had electricity and all – just most of it we used to power the freezer, and some for the lightbulbs at night. I love situations where I’m working outside and I’m too busy for the internet. I always come home thinking, “YEAH, I’ll just stay off forever!”

I’m on again in less than a day.

Wendell Berry railed against "hypertext." But now people use it without even knowing that they use it. How simply can I be living if I have facebook, myspace, flickr, and a blog? Not to mention, some old website stuff on comcast. It's just such a huge part of our culture and our relationships now. I tried deleting facebook -- I think I lasted like a week, maybe. Best week ever, but... I have scads of friends in North Carolina who I enjoy spying on.

Anyway, I’ve tried setting boundaries for myself and they’re just so easily ignored. I don’t really know where to go from here.