Hi, My name is Arnettra and I'm an...

I am addicted to the internet. Specifically, I'm addicted to what's called fandom. It's a group of people, mostly women, who are rabidly interested in a movie, book, group, etc., so much so they begin to write short stories, novellas, hell, novels, about their particular interest. But these aren't just any stories, the majority of them are erotic stories, featuring a heterosexual couple (het), a lesbian couple (femmeslash), or, the most prevelant, slash, featuring two men. Now this last one is by far my favorite. Why? I couldn't tell you, maybe I like the exploration of gender roles in slash, or maybe I just really like reading about anal sex. I don't know, and I don't really care why I like it. I just know I do, and that's not the problem. The problem is the amount of time I spend on fandom. I can spend HOURS trolling the internet looking for my next fix, I go on different communities to talk to other fans about my fascination with specific characters, what I think about their characterizations, and how I hot I think Mr. X is with Mr. Y. It's fun but it's completely eaten my life. It has superceded having a social life. I'm better about now than I was when I first found out about fandom (thanks Jennie H.!), but I still find myself on Friday, Saturday nights, in the front of the computer, bag a chips and a pop to my left and thoughts of nothing but the next story in my head. This needs to stop; I feel like I allowed this fascination to eat my twenties and I don't want this dominating my thirties, too. I want to spend time with other people face to face, touching, smelling, feeling other people, not over the wires. Don't get me wrong, I think the computer is a viable way of connecting to other people, but it shouldn't be your main connection. And it's mine, and really, I've never used it to truly get to know someone else, so I'm even failing at internet 'friending.' I just want my life back. I quit cold turkey, but that only lasted ten days before I was right back on my livejournal 'friends' page, looking to see if anything good had been posted. I don't know if slowly weaning myself off will work, I don't want to give it up completely, I just want it to become something fun I do for a handful of hours a week or every other week, not my main source of entertainment. I need help, but where do you go to get help for something like this? I guess I'm just going to have to work this one out on my own. I'll keep you posted; right now I have to check my friend's page.