The internet never shuts down.

It’s easy to while away a couple of hours online.  Before work, after work, in between housework or looking after kids.

Swivel-chair potatoes

Before the internet came along, most of us woudn’t have identified with being a ‘couch-potato’

Couch potatoes are sluggish, passive consumers of entertainment. We’re not like that!

Online, it’s true that what we do is often not passive. We’re actively doing a lot of different things. We can visit 200 stores or more in a single day, pay our bills, chat with friends, read the news, play multi-player games, watch videos and movies and update our blogs and Facebook pages.

But the truth remains that we’re still just sitting there.

Whether we sit on a computer chair or relax with a laptop on our sofas or beds – it’s all the same. We’re not moving.

Where have you been?

It’s easy to get involved with any number of groups online– friends and family on Facebook, groups within Twitter, blogging communities, business networking websites, discussion forums, social networking applications, niche groups… it goes on.

Keeping up with even a small number of these can be extremely taxing on your time.

We can even end up feeling obliged to update everything and read everyone else’s updates.

People notice if you’re missing from the scene and you might even be left feeling that you’ve let the community down.

The never-ending update

We spend so much time ‘connecting’ online,  sometimes we lose sight of ourselves.

You might have heard people saying that they’re taking a break from the web.

That’s how intense it can be. We can experience internet burn-out.

We don’t normally need to ‘take a break’ from the TV. We use TV to wind down, to relax.

(On the TV, no one is asking you to look at the latest cute LOL cats picture,  join their Facebook page, or sign up for their newsletter or RSS feed. there’s no emails.  And you don’t have to update the TV on your life. It doesn’t care. And sometimes that can be a very good thing.)

But of course, we don’t want to go from being glued to our computer monitors to being glued to the TV screen.

Reconnecting with ourselves

Women have had a huge role in shaping the web and making it into the social playground it is today.

But it’s gone too far if we feel ‘accountable’ to online communities.

Women can get caught in a trap of feeling accountable to everyone and not thinking about themselves often enough.

Women are taught to please– to be everything to everyone.

But of course, we can’t be.

Men take time out. It’s a healthy thing – for mind and body.

When we were children, we wanted to climb trees, swim rivers, sing, dance, run, zoom about like wild things. We found joy in making our bodies move!

For many women, the daily routine of marriage, children and household chores can have us going around in circles most days,  and the emotional weight of being the ’nurturer’ can wear us down.

Anne Maybus at Cherry Magazine wrote a very insightful article on this subject, Whose Body is it Anyway?

Anne talks about how from the time girls start developing– society places different expectations upon them.

Do it today

Move.

Do.

Be.

Find.

Discover.

Jump.

Run.

Spend more time away from the internet.

Reconnect with the child you were.

Don’t wait…

The child in you is waiting.