Overwhelmed?

Once upon a time there was this older fellow who lost his sanity to technology.

He blogged.  He tweeted.  He even facebooked and LinkedIn-ed.  Still there were more and more people wanting more and more of his time to buy more and more of their stuff-ideas-beliefs-and-more.

Eventually he went a little nuts, took his boat out, and tossed his computer and I-phone into the lake.  Afterwards he took out his fishing pole, threw the line in, and spent the rest of the day floating around while mumbling under his breath.

Everyone – especially his kids – said he was insane. “How can you just give up the ability to connect with new friends, customers, prospects, and followers???”  He just grabbed his bait box and walked out the door, smiling.

He fished for months, and even caught something once in a while.  Then one day, Conan O’Brien found the guy had stopped tweeting, and called him up.  He got his answering machine… “I’ve gone fishing.  Leave a message and I might get back to you.”

“This is Conan O’Brien.  This is your lucky day.  I’m going to give you a million dollars for being the only American left whose NOT tweeting!”

Since he was always out fishing, this guy never got his messages.  He did, however, catch the best bass ever found in that lake!

So what’s the moral of the story? Live your passion, and don’t let the technology overwhelm you.  When it does, stop.  Or at least slow down.

Is technology really taking over our lives and driving us crazy?  Are we becoming like the humanoids in The Matrix – dumbed-down versions of real people?

Maybe.  I don’t know.  What I DO know is that if you have a passion for something, you will find ways to share this thing with others.  Technology – as overwhelming as it can be – is simply a tool.  It is simply a way to share your passion with others.

Young people take to this stuff like a duck to water.  They relish the thought of having 15 applications running simultaneously while they drive or sit in class.  They instinctively see how their passion is translated to sharing.

I remember these thoughts of wanting to ditch the whole thing.  Heck, I even bought a cabin in the woods where I CAN’T get cell phone messages or the Internet!  Its a place I can go to de-stress, unwind.  Relax.

So find the time to unwind.  The act with passion.  Don’t have a passion?  Simply ask yourself this before going to sleep:  “What would I be doing, if I didn’t have to ‘earn a living’?”  Then let the answer come to you during the night.

Once you have your passion.  Start writing about it.  If you don’t write, talk!  There are programs out there that can write for you!

However you do it, here are the steps to harness technology for your passion:

• Create a blog
• Write (or record) stuff,
• Use keywords and link to other interesting sites,
• Have Ping.fm or some other bookmarking site bounce your posts around the internet, and
• Do this a few hundred times,
  
• Then go fishing!

Not a fisherman?  No problem.  Do something else you love.  If you are blogging about your passion, go learn more about that passion from another source.  Play.  Have fun.  Learn how to de-stress . . . your own way!