Have I become too connected?

I've always fancied myself a pretty technologically progressive individual, but with my recent purchase of the Blackberry Storm as an engagement present to myself, have I crossed a line? Is it possible to be TOO connected? I've found myself caught between two lives; my e-life and my real life. You would think that it would be my e-life interrupting my actual life, but recently, it kind of seems the opposite is true. Is it OK when your socializing happens more on the internet than it does in real life?
For the past few days, I've been basically confined to a bed in a hospital with some ailments. What have I been doing to keep entertained? I've been plastering my life on Twitter which has been cross posting my life on facebook and the madness has followed. I've been sending text message updates to my closest friends and BlackBerry messengering my friends lucky enough to have BlackBerries.
I started questioning a possibly oversaturated e-life when one of my closest friends called me because he read about my problems through facebook. I thought to myself, "Isn't this wrong? I've been like brothers with the guy for more than 10 years and he has to learn about my hospitalization through facebook? Isn't there something wrong there? Shouldn't he have at least learned through word of mouth from another friend from our circle?" I felt bad enough that I called another very good friend of mine and made sure he heard what was happening from me.
I also find myself at times absolutely disconnected from my real life and aggravating. Anita will be talking to me and probably feels ignored because I'm not paying full attention to what she's saying because I'm in the middle of checking my friend feed or tweeting something really clever. Isn't this wrong? This girl is the love of my life and she's playing second seat to my presented life on the internet? Isn't that just a LITTLE bit insane?
While incarcerated here in my hotel room of tubes, wires, and injections, I've had TONS of people come and visit me. What have most of them had to deal with? Me, explaining to people what's going through various mediums available on my phone. Is this not awful? I feel awful. They took time out of their lives to haul themselves over here and had to deal with me typing away on my phone? It feels rude.
The question is... Now that I've entered into this uber-techno-savvy life... How do I turn around? How do I increase the level of my life in... Well... My life. When my phone gives off one of its familiar alerts, I find myself excited to see who has interacted with me and what they have to say and how I'm going to respond. How do I bring that sensation back to my real life? Should I have people make strange sounds before interacting with me? Will that catch my attention? I feel like asking these questions makes me sound absolutely insane. Am I really debating the need to disconnect? Am I whining because I'm addicted to my new toy???
This is ridiculous. I'm not too connected. I've just been a little extra e-ish with my life because I've been reporting the latest medical disaster in my life. Once this whole ordeal is over, I should be fine. I'm just bored and needed a reason to fill the time.



PS - Tweet #wilbur We're trying to make it a trending topic. It's what we've named my enlarged spleen!

Anita Roshini Ramnath

Seriously, the last few weeks of my life have been so blech, I don’t know what I’d do without Anita.  She’s better at picking up the slack than anyone else I’ve ever known.  She’s also even better at not letting me wallow too much in self pity and illness and to keep my head on my shoulders and be realistic.  That’s probably more important than anything else.

Last week, we had our Ashirbad/Engagement party and it was amazing.  I felt like crap through most of it, but it was amazing.  My friend Mike’s wife made us a FABULOUS cake for it.

Ashirbad

If you can believe it, I actually forgot my camera for this!  This album is made of a compilation of my friends’ pictures.  More later.

 

Right now, I’d like to go to sleep and sleep through the night for once.