Addiction support and counselling?

We’re going on holiday. My laptop is going to be left in the capable hands of a house-sitter, while we disappear for a week. I should be excited, right? Going abroad with books and music to somewhere warm is enough to put a smile on anyone’s face.

The problem is, I am panicking about leaving my work behind. My laptop and I are permanent companions. We spend all our time together, and we are very good friends. No matter that the left mouse click button is loose and jumps off sometimes when I type too enthusiastically. No matter that it overheats and shuts down towards the end of a long piece of writing, and refuses to recover it for me.

Everyone has quirks, and I forgive them. I love my laptop in the same way a Formula 1 driver loves his car. We come as a team. I am worried about leaving him behind. There’s worse elements to my addiction. I use Facebook. I blog. I play Farmville. (Yes, I admit that – Farmville is fantastic!) What am I going to do having to leave these things behind? What if my cabbages wither?

I wonder if there is addiction counseling for people who are forced to step away from the virtual world for a few days? I think this might be a trend which starts over the next few years, as more and more of us find it harder to leave our PCs alone for more than a couple of hours at a time!

Just as I snigger at the end of Reality TV shows when I hear that people are offered counselling to cope with the loss of the programme, so I look back at this post and think ‘Jen, you’re truly pathetic’. Acknowledging the problem, they say, is the first step in putting it right.

I’m going to go and harvest some virtual crops, and think it all through.