internet related symptoms regarding technology

There are yellow signs where I go running out in the wilderness. These yellow signs say (paraphrase): "We exist because at one point someone saw a cougar here so, by law, we are posted to warn you that cougars will eat your children and your small dogs and try to maim any slow-moving adults within your vicinity." The signs say further: "If you encounter a blood-spattered cougar in the process of eating a freshly-killed bull elk, do not run away. This will only make the cougar's ears perk up and its heart race and it will run you down into the dust and tear out your throat." Next to the yellow signs are other signs, signs that indicate cyclists and joggers are welcome to use the trails. In fact, please use the trails, please please please.

Let's put this together: There are cougars here. Cougars chase moving objects and fast-moving objects just encourage them even more. Meanwhile, please engage in fast-moving activities. Yet, beware of cougars. Good cop, bad cop, good cop, bad cop AGHHHH whiplash. Die.

So I like running these trails because they're devoid of people on bad days, barely even a handful of folk on tolerable days. There are no "good" days. It's February on the Oregon coast, what are you talking about? Just past the trails, on the beach, the wind is horrible and it's bitter, bitter cold, but on the trails the trees protect you and the cool air is a bonus as you heat up from a run. I'm much more productive in this sort of running environment where no one can watch me and judge me.

M. runs too and she told me how after she does her set number of laps, she'll sprint as fast as she can on the very last lap. Last time she did this she almost threw up everything she'd ever eaten. Sounded great to me. And it was and is and I have incorporated it into my runs. I'll trot along the trail at a medium clip, intersperse trotting with walking if it's a quiet sort of day and then, on my way back to my car, I'll bolt, sprinting as fast as I can for a little under 1/4 of a mile. My lungs feel like they're about to explode and my legs might give way underneath me at any second and my heart's banging around like a car crash and I want to die. It feels fantastic.

I usually collapse next to my car wheezing and shaking and sometimes park rangers drive by and frown like they're thinking about calling an ambulance. They haven't yet.

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The Internet has been filling me with a sort of panic recently. Or, I mean, I've been filling myself with a lot of panic about the Internet recently. Yes.

It's too fast and colorful and full of people who groove it and take lots of pictures of themselves and leaves on sidewalks. It's also fantastic and you could keep traveling the road for years and it's expansive like the universe and completely overwhelming. I've been reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and I must have a technology phobia like he describes.

This has also been said before, and maybe it's just been at the forefront of my mind, but I see the whirling glitter of the Internet and gadgetry and I don't think it's made any of us better people. Big surprise, I know. Shocker. (Thriller!) I don't know that we've become any better at loving or thinking. Instead, I have new ways to obsess. So, yes, a me problem, not necessarily a societal problem unless it is a society of 1 and I am that 1. Which I'm not. I hope.

Know more! But there's already so much to know. Visualize! Imagine! Create more! Express more! Read read read read read and listen. Are you bored, boring, moving, sleeping, dancing/not dancing, involved, uninvolved, volunteering, in the know, in the way, in the blogosphere, definitions, snarky asides, cut and edit and... research!

So obviously Katie just needs to relax and stop over-thinking. Katie will go do that now.