The LifeQuake Blog

This is my third blog on the shadow side of social communities.
I read an interesting article on the marketplace blog, see link below about how social communities may be infringing on the writer's life, in terms of productivity. The author of this article took a break from her internet addiction and found she was meeting her deadlines more effectively. I would have to agree with her. For me though, it is not about the distraction so much as a style change. Taking the time to go on facebook or twitter seems to dilute my creative focus because of the change in one's voice and orientation. You begin to sound very clipped and superficial in your attempt to be pithy enough for the characters allowed. Between texting and tweeting, how lazy does it make us as writers?

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A few weeks ago I wrote about this new burgeoning addiction to social communities and asked a lot of questions to help you assess if it’s a real problem for you. In today’s post I want to talk about solutions.

I think at the heart of social community addiction is the avoidance of loneliness. Whatever we run from will have power over us. If you have a need to be connected to people through twitter 10 times
a day, you don’t have a healthy relationship with yourself or with the joy of solitude so before you go on the internet, even email, take 15 minutes, close your eyes and breathe into your diaphragm deeply. Then place one hand over your heart and send love to yourself. corny maybe, but it works. Taking time out to center yourself before you start your day may bring you into deeper relationship with yourself and your connections to others will be less desperate. another tip I gleaned from another blog I want to share here as well.
There actually is a website for people who need assistance in getting clean from their facebook or you tube fix.
This is from dailyblogtips:
You basically add the URL of the site that is consuming your time, and then the service will provide you with another URL that you should use to access the service (ideally you should bookmark it and always use it). If you try to access the site more than once within a specific time interval, say 60 minutes, they service will block you and remind that you should wait some time before you can go there again.

http://www.dailyblogtips.com/keepmeoutcom-solve-your-internet-addiction-problem/

And if that doesn’t work, start your own 12 step program for cyber junkies!
Dr. Toni Galardi has just offered her first newsletter. go to www.LifeQuake.net and subscribe on the contact page.

Yesterday I was contacted through Facebook by a guy from Torino, Italy who has the same last name as me. I accepted his invitation to be his friend given we have the same name. I was slightly amused by the fact that although he’s married, he listed one word under the “Your interests” category: women. But if you understand Italian culture, you don’t judge.

Anyway, he contacted me again today inviting me to be a part of the Galardi Family where 30 people all named Galardi were listed. At first, I almost didn’t accept.  Although I do business under the name Galardi, my legal last name is Gagliardi but people don’t know how to pronounce it correctly in this country (phonetically it is pronounced Gaul-yar-dee).  When  I started doing media appearances twenty years ago I shortened the name so it wouldn’t be pronounced Gag -liardi.

But in looking at all these pictures of people with my current last name, it made me think about how the word family is changing. Now with Facebook, we really are connecting with each other all over the world every day and the idea of a global family is no longer just an ideal concept. We are meant to transform our definition of family as we make this global leap in evolution.  The evolutionary biologists tell us that we are all connected to ancestors in South Africa. So I decided that whether my name is Galardi or Gagliardi, I am connected to these people in Torino. The irony is that my grandmother’s second husband John Sorgini was from Torino.  Although we were not blood related, he was the only paternal grandfather I ever knew. Six degrees of separation…

Dr Toni Galardi is a licensed psychotherapist and Change Expert.  Her new book The LifeQuake Phenomenon is available through her website www.LifeQuake.net or the online bookstores.  To contact Dr. Galardi for a consult, call 310-712-2600.