Jul 14, 1999, 11:00am

I've been thinking about the Net again recently.

The last five months I've been a pretty busy guy - new home to deal with, new living situations (Richmond SUCKS! Yeah!), and a lot more work than I had a year ago at this time.
A lot more work. This evening, Jean and I were playing some backgammon in the back, and while she ran off to answer the phone, I realized something - compared to a year or two ago, I don't spend nearly as much time "socializing" on the Net anymore. My ICQ time back then was legendary - sometimes 4-5 hours a day, mostly in multichat sessions. Going back even further (say 1995, 1996), and IRC was my time waster - all social, all chat, all the time.

I also spent quite a bit more time on my email... at any given time 2 years ago, I bet I spent at least 2 hours a day on social email. Heh. I even remember... there was one person who used to exchange literally dozens of emails per day with me.

But these days I simply can't find the time. As my little business grows and I find myself delegating more and more work to others, I find a lot of my time is taken up on communication issues. My long, casual email convos have been replaced with long, detailed business emails with clients and subcontractors.

And I can't help feeling a serious case of Deja vu.

I mean, I've been through all this before, haven't I? It was called puberty, my teenage years, and adulthood.

Think about it. I remember how as a young teen, things were pretty casual, and my biggest time concerns were how I'd juggle baseball with rugby. I never heard the term "time management" and frankly, never knew the concept at this age. By the time I was in my second year at Carleton (my first year was an alcoholic haze, can't believe I got the grades I did), I didn't just know the term "time management", I lived it. My entire life was organized around a little DayTimer book, and frankly there weren't a lot of variances. I had become "responsible".

So now as I type this, I'm reflecting back on a few things. My understanding is that you only go through these things once in life... unless you just give up and become some kinda street bum or something (like win the lottery). From the time you graduate, you're supposed to be Mr. Responsible (or Ms.) and as you get older, the responsibilities increase. That's what I always thought.

But the Net (not just the Web) has changed that, not only for me, but I suspect for many people.

As we reach the new millennium, the Net is definitely becoming something entrenched. I've been on the Net for almost 7 years now, and I look back at my experiences and it really does compare to the process of going from child to adult:

• In the beginning, everything was new. I looked at everything with wonder and awe.
  
• In the first few years, everything continued to be new, but everything changed constantly, giving me constant new things to discover.
  
• As the years ticked by, I got into my share of fights, got to explore more, got to learn constantly. I made friends, I made enemies. I started to mature.
  
• As more years ticked by, a lot of the leisure things I did gave way to work related things. I no longer looked at things going "wow". I started looking at things and go "lets see how I can do that".
  
• Talking to friends changed to talking with people at work, and about work. I didn't always read and view things just for fun any longer... now I was reading and viewing things because I had to, or because it would improve me, make my working life better.
  
• Chat sessions with friends became something that was rarely done - more like a special occasion.
  
  

Looking at the above, you could easily attribute these stages to growing up, but in this case they are stages in my Net experience (Okay, so maybe not everyone runs their life like this - I'm sure many folks spend more time talking to their friends or playing around, vegging than they do working, but that's not the way I do things).

I won't say that the Net, the Web, Usenet, email, etc isn't fun for me anymore, because it still is. I love my job, and other than the definite lack of security (from being self employed), I can't think of anything else I'd rather do. I get to surf the Net, and get paid for it. I get to create things, and get paid for it. I get to even see my work printed in magazines, in newspapers, and featured on TV shows, and it fills me with a hell of a lot more pride than if I was still working in a cubicle in some government office. I love my job, and I still like my overall Net experience a lot.

But I think the "age of innocence" is definitely over. The Net has gone from being an educational tool, to being a diversion, to being work for me. I still have my fun and even some social intercourse (I'm a regular contributor to the alt.coffee newsgroup, though as of late I've given up on van.general again - too many kooks). I just don't have time any longer for the 3 hour ICQ chat sessions. I don't even have much time for my personal projects any longer. For instance, I've been working on a monster coffee obsession site for ages now, and it's still incomplete and in beta. I want to get it done, but finding the time for it....

And I'm really sad to say, I don't have a heck of a lot of time for intense email convos any longer. I wish I did... and maybe I should make some more time. I know a lot of really cool folks on the Net (I've long since weeded out the ones who... naw... not going to go there), and it's been my own fault that I haven't kept up with those relationships.

Hrmmmmmm.

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