I’ll tell you what hermits realize.

If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet,
you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.

Alan Watts

I have two seemingly conflicting loves: my love of nature and the great outdoors, and my love of technology and the internet.

I want to share them both with my children, but I have full-time employment online and I write for several websites in my “free” time. About nature, and eco-issues, and parenting, and family fun. The problem is, the more time I dedicate outside my actual job to write about those things, the less time I have to actually do them.

This is an inner conflict that really gets me down, sometimes. When I go quiet here, for a while? It’s because I’m trying to even the scales there, for a while.

Once upon a time my solution would have been to just give up, power down and go back to Luddite living, but I’m in too deep now. Not only do I make a living on the internet, but the connections I’ve found there make me feel like I’m making a difference, in some small way. And I’m inspired, daily, by the stories and images and lives that I see.

Muir said of nature, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” And I feel the same about the internet: it fuels a human connection that is unprecedented and complex and important.

We live in a world so different from the one I grew up in. A vibrant global community I can’t walk away from.

But I don’t that online connection to usurp my connection to my children and the natural world.

So I’m looking for alternative solutions to help create a meaningful balance of online time and outdoor family time, beyond the obvious “spend more time offline.” And I’m eyeing up this portable solar generator that can power a laptop.

With this bad boy, I could take the kids camping, unplug during the day,  and still be able to blog about it at night (and, you know. Do work so I don’t get fired). My iPad sips energy when compared to my MacBook; I bet I could nearly double the expected use time. And I wouldn’t spend my time with the kids worried about the work and emails piling up for my return home.

It would also come in super handy during events like yesterday’s hurricane, which knocked out my power for 12 hours (which I considered a lucky break, frankly; I expected a much longer wait for power to be restored). We’d been warned power could go up to two weeks before being restored.

I can’t be without internet for over 48 hours. I just can’t. I’d be put so far behind it makes me panicky just considering it.

Hi. My name is Robin and I’m an eco-freak who loves technology.

I’m really excited about the idea of blogging while hiking or camping for extended periods. A thoroughly modern-day Thoreau in his cabin.

Is that weird?

Are you a tech or internet addict? Tell me I’m not alone.

 

Disclaimer: I am participating in a blog campaign from Bucks2Blog for a portable solar panel company and was compensated. Views, opinions and parenting #fail confessions are my own.