Enough?

How much peanut butter is enough? How many hours in one day at the keyboard is enough? How many times a day checking your e.mail is enough?

Buried within an article in INTERNET@SCHOOLS, the author makes a New Year's resolution to check her e.mail only three times a day. That should be enough.

Would three times a day checking my e.mail be enough? Would peanut butter only at breakfast be enough? Can I survive on only one hour at the computer keyboard a day? How does one decide what is enough?

I tried this week. I checked my in-box only in the morning after having a peanut butter rice cake with dried cranberries, around noon after having a peanut butter granola bar with raisins, and prior to going to bed (you guessed, another peanut butter rice cake, this time with jelly). Surprise to me, it was enough for keeping on top of all the information I needed to receive digitally. That hourly and sometimes more often of checking was not really necessary. Now to work on slowing the consumption of peanut butter.

But that leaves the time at the computer keyboard each day. I tried, really tried to cut that time. I found that I had little else to do with my time. Even when involved with a physical task like shelving books on library shelves, assisting a student in research, answering a scheduling problem, showing an instructional video, or entering new material into the library system, without the computer keyboard, I could not do my job.

You might be saying, "so do other tasks". My life seems void and empty if I take the keyboard out of the picture. It is a part of my life that I take for granted. Without technology, I am a flimsy, soft shell without substance holding it full.

I think while working on the computer. I plan while doing mundane, repetitious tasks on the computer. I use all parts of my brain and feel interested in life and what will happen next when occupied with using technology (either for work at school or living at home).

Enough said.