Is electrified lucrativity worth it?

Reflecting today on the amount of time I spend dealing with my computer and my phone... absurd amounts as many of you know.

I have started to become increasingly sensitive to it - not wanting my phone to touch my ear or other parts of my body (only using my headpiece) and not liking my computer to be on my lap.
But I still spends way too much time using them for logistics, jobs, personal organization, etc. I've created a sort of sick dependency which I perpetuate.

I can feel the computer sucking energy out of me, draining my eyeballs and covering me radiation.

I rarely make lists on paper like I used to, or write people letters, or have an address book or calendar, take notes in notebooks, etc.

Zo recently mentioned that soon we'll have electronic books - the idea seemed unreal, books on a screen just takes away so much from the experience. But who wins at night as work has piled up and online-social networking is back=logged?

Also - hate to admit it, but a lot of my interaction is electronic because I keep moving and travelling and building a global support network rather than local - talking to my sister via videochat while I'm in Vietnam and she's in Brazil.

Hopefully soon there'll be a movement - the disconnected travel movement - which I will join. As of now it really doesn't make much of a difference where you are if you're interacting electronically - you can skype for free, video, calls, etc etc. Takes away some of the fun of "going away."

I have also spent more money on my computer than on any other one thing except for the car (that I totaled in 4 days, making $1200 mind you)

This all perpetuates dependence, and also adds a different kind of risk - rather than losing an addressbook, piece of paper, what if I lost my phone with it's 900 contacts?
(most are backed-up now).

I used to memorize phone numbers, and the only phone numbers I remember now are ones I memorized ten years ago. i don't remember much anymore - it's all backed up on a little external harddrive.

When I didn't have a cell phone (started by sharing one in 2004) and didn't have a laptop (2002), everything was non-virtual, and I didn't work consistent jobs.

Now I've set myself up so that my income is directly related to how much time I spend on the phone or computer - I am waaay too accessible. My lucrativity has become electrified.

But I'll admit, I partially like being accessible - for the late night phonecalls of recipes, or Zero 7 concerts, or ...etc

Yet one of the reasons that I have my job right now is because of that accessibility - my boss needs someone who will always answer their cell phone and always call him when he gets an important email.

So, I'm good at using electronics, good at making money using them, get paid a fair amount to use them, but they suck lifeforce out of me. Interesting trade-off.

So - contemplating disconnection.

Contradictions in Travel: adventure/environment/externalities

The word I've been searching for has yet to be found, but describes the state of holding 2 or more contradicting thoughts at the same time about a certain thing.

Travel is such an activity/concept for me and has been throughout my life - most recently coming into focus a bit more as I increasingly (yes, due to the fact that I'm in Texas) meet people who haven't left their city.

Side story: When I lived in Arkansas, working at the Heifer World Headquarters, the secretary I became friends with desperately wanted to leave the state but:

• She didn't know anyone who was interested in traveling with her
• She didn't know anyone outside of the state thus had noone to visit
  
• She didn't think she had enough money saved up
• She wasn't quite confident enough to go on a trip by herself
  

Although my first reaction was "Come visit me!" - I was trying to help her think of other options which wouldn't potentially put her in some danger through travelling with people

Misled in school

So, after 4 years - or maybe it was three - studying international development and social change, and now starting to become more and more active and ask more and more questions - I keep coming across contradicting examples for certain "theories" i learned.
Unfortunately, I never had examples to begin with, so I can contradict these examples
with case studies showing the otherside.

A recent example...

While in Vietnam, I went to the board dinner of the Asia Pacific Roundtable on Sustainable Consumption and Production - at a nice little vietnamese restaurant where, as I soon realized was usual, the waitresses all wear traditional long robes of beautiful silk, without patterns.
I was intrigued by the fact that when working, everyone wore these elegant traditional garm, but when not working, they wore jeans and high-heels and t-shirts!

So at this dinner I sat next to a very well educated Sri Lankan man who has been working in international development for decades.

I mentioned something regarding the problem with professionals being trained in Sri Lankan Universities and then leaving the country to work elsewhere for better wages and how it's an intellectual drain on the country and benefits "developed" countries. I had learned this in my Tales From The Far Side International Development Class.

ON THE CONTRARY: He said that they want their people to go and work and move abroad because they don't have enough jobs for the people they are training - and if you send them abroad - they will send incredible amounts of money back home!

We had quite insufficiently explored this - and without case studies!