The tragedy of technology, the writer and engineer Samuel Florman wrote decades ago, was that for everything it brings us, it takes something away. I think we all know this story – we are increasingly slaves to messages, e-mails, notifications, likes, too much information raining down on us from all directions at all times. We are losing the sense of thinking in our own heads, many people are becoming message, grieving, soothing, like,  and news addicts, their consciousness is increasingly agitated by information and connection we cannot always control.

Every day, I see people grieving for cats and dogs that died years ago, and hundreds more people rushing to be sorry for their loss, and to share their own. Every day, my inbox is flooding with the ranting political messages from the left and right, our civic culture has become a dispiriting cesspool of rage and accusation. There is nothing uplifting in these messages that I can find.

The vast messages are not, in fact, messages at all, but feelings, impulses, unfiltered emotions and thoughts. The most wonderful messages I receive mostly come in my Post Office Box (P.O.Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816), people actually have to stop and think about what they want to say.

The corporate nation has taken away any vestiges of privacy or personal space and we can only hope we never get the kind of government that wants to do bad things with the information it can gather on us. Every friend I have is talking about how to deal with the intrusion of technology in lives, with the lack of personal connection and communications,  the managing of equipment and hardware and security, the the stress of coping with so much information that comes to us in an unbounded and intrusive way. One friend is planning to travel overseas this month and she is considering leaving her cell phone at all. I doubt she can do it.

Another friend has become seriously addicted to catastrophic global news, he is coming to see the world in imminent peril, he trawls the Web for information about the decline of Mother Earth, his million to follow every story and alert us to it. He speaks of the news the way addicts talk of drugs or alcohol, he can no longer turn it off. I am going to take his Ipad away from him for a few days, he has agreed, but the terrified look in his eyes tells me it will be very hard for him to do.

My own story is more benign but also serious. New technologies like my blog and Facebook have literally saved me as a writer and altered  my creative life in profoundly meaning ways. But I am also struggling to balance the crush of technology with a spiritual life, peace of mind and the space to think creatively. I miss all of the people I used to speak with but who now only communicate by text and e-mail. A major reason I chose to leave my long-time publisher, Random House, is that hardly anyone in that good and worthy place will speak to me directly any longer, and in some ways, this was choking my creative life, turning me angry, leaving me confused and disconnected. My new editors speaks to me, it makes all of the difference.

I am not on Facebook all day, I do not see half of the messages I get there, it’s now well more than 1,000 a day. If I read them all, I would be doing nothing else. I love to blog and put up my photos, it is both spiritual and peaceful for me, I will keep doing it. I am thinking of taking one day a week – a Saturday perhaps – and joining with Maria in having a Sabbath kind of day (I am not religious but a am drawn to the idea of a day of rest) and turning off the phone, and messaging system. I would still drive for things I need – the hardware and grocery store –  and blog but put some boundaries around my space. No e-mails, no news either.

I have come to see the news as part of a system that increasingly has little to do with my life, it distorts the world, it does not keep me informed. It is unhealthy most of the time, and there is no healthy way to pay much attention to it and remain undamaged and in a spiritual place. Technology is a powerful force in our lives, I see that every day I must consider how I wish to manage it and keep my mind healthy and free.