Bake an enormous batch of cookies. Knock on your neighbors’ door, tell them you’re never going to be able to eat all of these cookies, and ask them if they want some. Repeat until this turns into a conversation or you run out of cookies.
On the other hand, that would mean parting with delicious, delicious cookies! I couldn’t do that! ;)
And my neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate being woken up at four in the morning, either. :(
Indeed, “being lonely” is something I should be able to fix. There are lots of people I used to know that I could get in touch with, and at least one lives pretty close by and has said I can drop in any evening I want. It’s just so hard to get off the computer...
Assuming the person in question uses e-mail or instant message clients or whatever, you don’t need to get off the computer in order to tell him you’ll be dropping by. It’s much easier to get up once you have an actual time limit you need to meet in order to avoid being late.
If you believe that you spend that time on the computer because you’re lonely, this would seem to be a prime example of “experiential pica”. If I were you my hesitation would probably be inertia, feeling like it would be odd to just stop in even if they left that offer open. In which case, perhaps you ought to will yourself to do it a first time so that it becomes more normal. You have little to lose, presumably.
Yes, the internet, sometimes it’s a substitute for company, but I think sometimes I spend a lot of time on the net reading what smart people have written (and there’s no end to it) as a kind of substitute for exercising my own creative intelligence. Reading other people’s smart stuff pushes a lot of my buttons intellectual-satisfactionwise but not all of them by any means. And that makes it feel like a kind of voyeurism.
Speaking of the net, I guess porn is a good example, in some ways it’s very close to something you want, but in other ways it’s nowhere near it.
I think I surf the internet because I’m lonely.
Bake an enormous batch of cookies. Knock on your neighbors’ door, tell them you’re never going to be able to eat all of these cookies, and ask them if they want some. Repeat until this turns into a conversation or you run out of cookies.
That would probably work, if I did it.
On the other hand, that would mean parting with delicious, delicious cookies! I couldn’t do that! ;)
And my neighbors probably wouldn’t appreciate being woken up at four in the morning, either. :(
Indeed, “being lonely” is something I should be able to fix. There are lots of people I used to know that I could get in touch with, and at least one lives pretty close by and has said I can drop in any evening I want. It’s just so hard to get off the computer...
Define “enormous” to mean “far more than you could possibly eat”.
We’re talking about cookies. By the time the second batch is done, your appetite will have returned!
(This is why I never make too much mashed potatoes—instead of refrigerating, I just sit there trying to eat it all.)
We’re gonna need a bigger oven
Assuming the person in question uses e-mail or instant message clients or whatever, you don’t need to get off the computer in order to tell him you’ll be dropping by. It’s much easier to get up once you have an actual time limit you need to meet in order to avoid being late.
If you believe that you spend that time on the computer because you’re lonely, this would seem to be a prime example of “experiential pica”. If I were you my hesitation would probably be inertia, feeling like it would be odd to just stop in even if they left that offer open. In which case, perhaps you ought to will yourself to do it a first time so that it becomes more normal. You have little to lose, presumably.
Yes, the internet, sometimes it’s a substitute for company, but I think sometimes I spend a lot of time on the net reading what smart people have written (and there’s no end to it) as a kind of substitute for exercising my own creative intelligence. Reading other people’s smart stuff pushes a lot of my buttons intellectual-satisfactionwise but not all of them by any means. And that makes it feel like a kind of voyeurism.
Speaking of the net, I guess porn is a good example, in some ways it’s very close to something you want, but in other ways it’s nowhere near it.