The Most Important Thing I've Written This Week

Also known as Perspective

Recently I've watched myself become less and less of an "internet person". The fundamental idea has been there for a long time, as I seldom integrate myself into online communities for more than a couple days. Today, however, in a fit of hyperbolic frustration, I went so far as to call myself a Luddite.

If you don't want to read my in-depth thinking on the subject (ie: what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it), go ahead and skip down to the last line... unless you don't have a sense of humor. If you don't have a sense of humor, just skip this post.

It seems to me that most things in the modern age are more fleeting than their counterparts have been in the past. The rate of things turning obsolete is insane. Depreciation isn't just for cars anymore. Like with cell phones, you can hardly find the model you bought six months later, and nobody sells the one I've got anymore. The camera I bought new 7 months ago has had TWO model updates since the purchase date.

While I like hearing about new things in the world, it's obvious that I don't quickly move to adopt the new technologies. I prefer plaintext programs to word processing. I still have win2k on my PC. This isn't just a matter of having little money, either. I prefer to have long, in-depth relationships than revolving and fleeting ones.

My relationships with hobbies, projects, and even the internet have even been revolving and fleeting lately. I've spread myself way too thin over the past months, and although I've said it out loud a few times, I've never gone so far as to do anything about it, instead just spreading myself thinner as I come across nifty things that I want to entrangle into my brain.

Here's an obvious symptom that encourages this self-diagnosis: I have no less than 12 tabs open in this firefox window that I want to read and follow up on. Yes, I weeded out all the tabs that were simply opened for quick references. Of these dozen tabs, I will read a maximum of two of them before I "Bookmark All" into a neatly labeled bookmark folder. There they will join the thousands of other pages I have marked for future inspection.

Acknowledgment of my catalog of unread bookmarks is nothing new. I know full well that I have that backlog, and I also know that I will just find more and more things to tab, tag, and ignore as I continue on this path of "exploration". It's time, once again to pull back and intentionally spend less time on the internet.

I've never had a "post every day" schedule for myself, leaving it to be "I post when I post", but that doesn't stop me from feeling guilty when I don't post new things, don't put myself out there as a netizen. Something I read in the past few days... I think Jon was referencing someone else... was basically this: "The internet has started to become a hobby, instead of being a place I come to talk about my hobbies." Profound, huh?

That thought, filtered through my "producer/consumer" spectrum modulator comes out as "You Are Being Consumed." I'm not producing anything, but I'm being eaten alive, absorbed by the intertubes. Thousands of little pages invite me in to observe, then climb into my brain and stake a claim, until they are ousted by other posts and pages and images and such. I'm not happy with that being my mental life.

Recently I've felt bereft of creativity. I do my drawing practice every day, and though my technique is improving and Reagan has good things today, I feel as though some of my "spark" is gone. I'm not spewing ideas and enthusiasm for those ideas. I've lost my passions, and, yes, I partially blame the internet.

Thus, I am going to run with this neo-luddism for a while. It's not a true philosophy, I'm not going to be destroying supercomputers or running off to live on a grim hillside with no electricity or running water. Instead, I'm just going to be less hip and more hippie, spend more time taking care of myself, my husband, and our home, and less time indulging in fleeting digital connections.

I also do this because I want to read more books.

Contrary to the capsing below, this has nothing to do with other people. I like to think I've never been expectant or demanding of my people I make connections with online, maintaining a bit of humility when other people are involved. Perhaps since my own life is so hectic, I ask little of other people. Maybe this ask little, expect little model of human interaction isn't a good one to have, but right now I feel like I have very little to offer. But that's a different internal discussion.

Also contrary to the capsing below, this proclamation of my internet-sabbatical doesn't apply to email or AIM. I'll visit those haunts regularly. And I'm not banning myself from LJ or a few select blogs, just giving myself permission to not show up. Maybe it's a self-imposed ban against certain sites, or types of sites... but dammit, I get too bogged down and tangled up in the net and it wraps me up and pulls me down.

I know I'll miss things while I'm gone, but for each fantastic thing I don't see "out there", I hope to see something in myself.

And now the short, drama-llama version:

YOU GUYS SUCK. WHAN. I'M LEAVING THE INTERNETS FOREVER. D:

:P