online fantasy versus offline reality

Online one may have a lot of friends, be very popular, interesting and interactive. But is it possible that in reality one may be a boring nerd glued to a computer a lot of the time, and neglecting a lot of difficulties? Seeking a kind of escape in the online identity?

Of course I myself have been in such situations esp earlier in the initial electronic forum days (long before this site). It all had more or less began in internal discussion forums of my previous company where I started getting more and more involved. Many things including work began to suffer, and the main thing is I used to suffer from low-selfesteem for having over-squandered office time, this was kind of like stealing considering that I was getting paid for that time based on trust. When I finally overcame it, my professional life took a radical positive turn. More important issues once again began to finally gain priority that they deserved.

Still my guess is that with so many interactive sites like orkut, facebook and flickr and so on –  its quite easy to get addicted to an online identity. And once that’s done, its pretty hard to pry him apart from it. It may be quite hard for him to see that whatever satisfaction he’s getting from the online world is just superficial, and is coming at a heavy price of losing many other things like say health particularly. Online relationships may seem to be more interesting than the real people he’s actually living with on a day to day basis!

While this whole Web 2.0 movement has its risks of people being too much online, I’ve no doubts that on the other hand its really moving us towards a more connected world.

I have no idea whether, though I’m writing this, whether I’m not still on the wrong side of the balance… 🙄 RwBs How to identify a blog addict was a cool guide 😎 for example. Still, many times old situations may reccur – and very inconspicously at first, just like the camel encroached into the tent!

Stephen Covey’s story seems to provide a reassurance that as long as we put the big items in, there will always be room for other stuff.

A time management guru was speaking to a group of type “A” personalities. He placed a wide-mouth gallon jar on the table in front of him. Next to the jar was a collection of fist-sized rocks. He carefully filled the jar with the big rocks, until he could fit no more.

He asked the group, “Is the jar full?”

Everyone responded, “Yes.”

He then pulled a large bowl of gravel from under the table and proceeded to pour the gravel into the jar. The gravel fit into the spaces between the rocks. He again queried, “Is the jar full?”

“Probably not,” was the group’s reply.

He reached for another bowl, this one filled with sand. He dumped the sand into the jar. The sand filled the spaces not taken by the rocks and the gravel. Once more, he asked, “Is the jar full?”

“No,” everyone agreed.

Finally, he reached for a pitcher of water and poured water into the jar until it was filled to the top. The time management guru looked at the group and asked, “What is the point of my illustration?”

One man replied, “That no matter how full your schedule is, you can always fit one more thing into it.”

“No!” the guru responded.

The point of this illustration is, “If you don’t put the big rocks in first, you’ll never get them in at all!”