Cold Turkey

I imagine that some readers of this blog are so young – over 18, I certainly hope, though I seldom say too much that's too explicit – but young enough that they remember using the family internet connection under their parents' watchful eye. I can imagine that in some cases that's pretty difficult – not wanting pages in the history but not wanting to suspiciously clear the history, following links so that at least addresses don't appear in the address bar, not saving the many text files or pictures that you'd prefer to. Parental oversight of internet activity is only something I've encountered when I've checked my e-mail from my mom's retirement apartment.
(by the way, having my mom, whom I do love dearly, watch me navigate the 'net is, unbelievably, even worse than having her navigate while I drive – why did you go there? It let you do that? I didn't know it would let you do that... I can't believe it let you do that, I never knew it would let you do that...)

But a close second to parental oversight is having the kids here for the holidays. At least I can dump the history and cache, the hell with suspicion. And I have a DVD writer so I can easily write out all of my scene files to DVD, lock it up, delete the files from the hard drive, and empty the recycle bin. Check anything I log into and make sure I haven't set it up to log me in automatically. Make sure nothing too obscene is listed in any of the applications' "recently used files" lists. And so on, though as I said, the least of my worries.

Then it's the five days of togetherness with cold-turkey withdrawal for three of my favorite activities – writing, reading, and corresponding. Though it goes far beyond feeling slightly (or wholly) out of touch. First of all, the teenagers have no desire for my 24/7 attention or activities – especially two of them who have strict limits on how much interpersonal interaction they can stand in any 24, 48, or 72-hour period. Exceed these limits and they either withdraw non-negotiably or break down physically. So I do come up with a fair amount of free time.

I hate to call myself a writer, since I only do it as a hobby, only write scene material, and only get it posted, never "published." But "as a writer" I always, always feel behind. Thinking takes minutes; writing takes hours or days. Thinking can occur at any time; writing, for me, requires a concentrated, seldom-interrupted block. Having five days (I took Wednesday off) without work would normally seem like a great time to "catch up" if that's at all possible, and some of the mountain of writing I'd like to do – and not only writing but on-line reading that I also can't always keep up with. Some of it's writing – stories and essays – and some is correspondence and dialogue and chatting, which can also be a little hard to keep up with, due to conflicting schedules and all.

Much as I love my kids – I'd much rather have them here every second weekend, if they still lived in town – having them here for all of my holiday and vacation time can be a bit taxing.

So if you're in an unfortunate situation – still sharing a computer with your parents, for instance, regardless of your age – you have my sympathy. But don't feel like you're alone. While I had a great Thanksgiving with much to be thankful for (including coming up with a Christmas present for my hard-to-buy-for youngest) I am still jumping back into things feeling five days farther behind than ever!