It is so hard for me to go offline for any period of time, and yet I’m so aware of how much I need to do this more regularly.
I’ve written before about my ambivalence about not having a Smartphone, which would give me easy access to email when I’m away from home. Sometimes I’m tempted to upgrade, and other times I’m so appreciate of the value of being compelled to just leave my email behind now and then – whether it’s for short periods of time when I go out to do errands or go for a walk, or longer periods of time like the day last month when I spent eight hours on a daytrip to southern Maine and had no access to email from about nine in the morning to five in the afternoon.
If anything, lately I feel like I’ve become more compelled to be on line. Receiving a hand-me-down netbook from my mother meant my online world was more portable then ever around the house, if still not actually portable outside the house. It became so easy to have the netbook with me in the kitchen when I was preparing meals, or on the porch when I was reading the paper, or on my nighttable when I was getting ready for bed at night.
But I was also becoming increasingly aware lately that I go to the Internet, particularly email, for the wrong reasons. I was constantly searching, waiting, anticipating that all-important email…and yet I can no longer explain what that email might be.
At some point it occurred to me I was looking at my computer screen the same way my husband sometimes looks into the fridge: certain that there must be something in there to satisfy his longings, and yet unable to name what that longing might be for, when I ask him pointblank what it is that he wants to eat.
And so this past weekend it was with a sense of relief that I closed up my computer at 10:00 Saturday morning and left for an overnight trip. “There’s nothing I need. There’s nothing that will come by email this weekend that will make my life any better than it already is,” I told myself several times. And I didn’t give it another thought while we were away.
The funny thing was that when we arrived home midafternoon on Sunday, I found I still didn’t want to get on line. I didn’t care how many emails had built up; just like my husband with the fridge, none of them was going to fulfill the nameless thing I wanted from it.
So I went for a walk in the woods instead. I walked for an hour and a quarter, and then when I got home I turned on my computer at last. I had 30 new emails, certainly not a staggering number for a day and a half off line. I scanned the subject lines quickly. A few from friends who I was happy to hear from, but none of them contained anything terribly important. A lot of ads, of course. A few items related to community events or issues. Nothing work-related since it was a holiday weekend. I went through them all briefly, responded to some, and then disconnected. It felt good.
Changing my ways this one time doesn’t mean I’ve ended my compulsion once and for all. It just means I’m trying really hard to rethink it, to remind myself that a sense of spiritual or emotional enrichment almost never comes via email. I don’t know if I really have the capacity to improve in this area. But reminding myself of how much more that walk in the woods did for me than scanning my emails ever will seems like a good start.
Showing posts with label connectivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label connectivity. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
A disconnected week
Because we are transitioning from one house to another, we have Internet access in neither home for most of this week. It’s been nearly fifteen years since I lived in a home without Internet access. As with so many changes to routine and the things we take for granted as part of daily life, it’s good to be reminded that what we are accustomed to isn’t how it has to be. And while for the most part I have to admit it’s a big inconvenience to be without Internet access – not only for email but for looking up addresses and phone numbers, checking my Google calendar, backing up documents I’m working on and much more – there are ways in which it brings a touch of grace, as well.
For the past few days I’ve gotten on line only a few times in the course of the day, by bringing my computer to my parents’ house or the library and taking advantage of their network. In between visits, I tend to wonder what I’m missing out on. Is someone trying to reach me – an editor, a friend? (Of course, if they are, they can always call.) Is there a breaking news story I don’t know about? (Of course, I’d hear about it on the hourly NPR news broadcast to which I tune in at least every couple of hours.) And what about those thoughts that constantly flit in and out of my head concerning ideas I need to communicate to other people? (I’m finally learning to write them down as I think of them, and then use those notes to dash off emails once I do get on line.)
In reality, it’s reminding me of what daily life was like when I was in college and in my early 20’s, before the widespread use of the Internet. Contact with friends was sporadic, not continuous. Whether “sporadic” meant a phone call every day or a letter once or twice a year, there were intervals of disconnection. We had time to mull over our correspondences and our relationships, rather than constantly and ceaselessly expanding upon them. I’m remembering what it’s like to save up personal news for the occasional phone call with my sisters or my parents rather than dashing off an email every single time I think of something that might interest them. And I’m remembering what it’s like to wonder what’s going on with my college roommate and look forward to our yearly or semi-yearly get-togethers rather than just logging onto Facebook to see what she did yesterday, last night, this morning.
All in all, it would be dishonest of me to pretend I’m fine with this Internet hiatus. Knowing that hours are going by when I might not know about an assignment from an editor or an important new piece of information for a story makes me anxious about getting my work done sufficiently, and I miss the steady comforting stream of chatter from email and social media.
But I’m also enjoying the novelty of a kind of silence that isn’t common anymore: not silence in the literal sense but the silence of cutting off our usual streams of communication. My 12-year-old son, who during our enforced Internet recess is missing the interactive online games he frequently plays with his friends and the instant-messaging he often conducts with a couple of girls in his class, said it was like a power outage only without the cold and darkness. I know what he means. As with a power outage, we’re having to break out of our usual patterns and find different things to do, different ways to carry on our preferred communications and entertainment.
I never cease to be delighted by the thrill that comes when the lights blaze and the heat roar back on after a blackout. It’s as if we’ve been without heat and brightness forever and not just for a few hours, each time it happens. We’ll feel the same way once we again have regular Internet access. For a couple of days it will seem fabulous; and then it will seem everyday again.
It’s good to be knocked out of our routine and thereby to remember anew just what exactly our routine consists of. I’ll owe a lot of emails once I’m back on line. For now, I’m thinking fondly of my friends, working hard on assignments, and hoping that I’ll be forgiven for my lack of communication this week.
For the past few days I’ve gotten on line only a few times in the course of the day, by bringing my computer to my parents’ house or the library and taking advantage of their network. In between visits, I tend to wonder what I’m missing out on. Is someone trying to reach me – an editor, a friend? (Of course, if they are, they can always call.) Is there a breaking news story I don’t know about? (Of course, I’d hear about it on the hourly NPR news broadcast to which I tune in at least every couple of hours.) And what about those thoughts that constantly flit in and out of my head concerning ideas I need to communicate to other people? (I’m finally learning to write them down as I think of them, and then use those notes to dash off emails once I do get on line.)
In reality, it’s reminding me of what daily life was like when I was in college and in my early 20’s, before the widespread use of the Internet. Contact with friends was sporadic, not continuous. Whether “sporadic” meant a phone call every day or a letter once or twice a year, there were intervals of disconnection. We had time to mull over our correspondences and our relationships, rather than constantly and ceaselessly expanding upon them. I’m remembering what it’s like to save up personal news for the occasional phone call with my sisters or my parents rather than dashing off an email every single time I think of something that might interest them. And I’m remembering what it’s like to wonder what’s going on with my college roommate and look forward to our yearly or semi-yearly get-togethers rather than just logging onto Facebook to see what she did yesterday, last night, this morning.
All in all, it would be dishonest of me to pretend I’m fine with this Internet hiatus. Knowing that hours are going by when I might not know about an assignment from an editor or an important new piece of information for a story makes me anxious about getting my work done sufficiently, and I miss the steady comforting stream of chatter from email and social media.
But I’m also enjoying the novelty of a kind of silence that isn’t common anymore: not silence in the literal sense but the silence of cutting off our usual streams of communication. My 12-year-old son, who during our enforced Internet recess is missing the interactive online games he frequently plays with his friends and the instant-messaging he often conducts with a couple of girls in his class, said it was like a power outage only without the cold and darkness. I know what he means. As with a power outage, we’re having to break out of our usual patterns and find different things to do, different ways to carry on our preferred communications and entertainment.
I never cease to be delighted by the thrill that comes when the lights blaze and the heat roar back on after a blackout. It’s as if we’ve been without heat and brightness forever and not just for a few hours, each time it happens. We’ll feel the same way once we again have regular Internet access. For a couple of days it will seem fabulous; and then it will seem everyday again.
It’s good to be knocked out of our routine and thereby to remember anew just what exactly our routine consists of. I’ll owe a lot of emails once I’m back on line. For now, I’m thinking fondly of my friends, working hard on assignments, and hoping that I’ll be forgiven for my lack of communication this week.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Pursuing the goal of an Internet hiatus
I need to make a greater effort to impose Internet hiatuses on myself.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while: ever since ten months ago when I traded my desktop computer for an ultralight “notebook”-style laptop. With the rather old-fashioned desktop, which lived permanently in my second-floor home office, hiatuses enforced themselves. I’d walk away from email and Internet simply because I had things to do in other parts of the house.
But the laptop is easy to bring along when I’m in the kitchen, which is where a lot of my non-office time in the house is spent. That means I know as soon as a new email pops onto my screen. I can look up a book on Amazon at a moment’s notice. I can check the weather forecast or see who’s doing what on Facebook – whenever I want to.
And naturally, like just about every other 21st-century Internet user in the world, I eventually realized it was too much. Too much distraction, too much ceaseless information. I was losing my ability to stay inside my own mind and exist without constant input from the outside world – whether the outside world consisted of an email from my sister or an op-ed piece in the New York Times.
I needed a change, and I was able to get a preview of what that might be like last weekend when I went to a retreat house in northeastern Connecticut. I brought my laptop with me because I planned to do a lot of writing, but I didn’t know if it was even possible to get on line from the retreat house and I didn’t plan to ask. This would be my enforced 48-hour fast from the Internet.
Except fate intervened in a small way when on Friday night, one of the retreat leaders asked me for some writing exercises and I thought of one I’d read about in a newspaper essay recently. I couldn’t reiterate the exercise myself; she’d need to see the original essay if she wanted to use it. “Just tell me the name of the essayist and the publication where you saw it, and I’ll get it on line,” she said. “This house has wireless access, you know. The password is the same is the phone number.”
It was too late to block my ears and sing, but I did not want to know that, because I didn’t want any temptations. I told the retreat leader that she could use my computer, but she’d have to access the article herself; I didn’t even want the little number popping up on my screen telling me how many new emails I had. I didn’t want even the slightest temptation to hop on line.
And for the rest of the weekend, I didn’t. Even after having been given the password, I stayed away, and it felt wonderful. My mind felt clearer without so much information to choose from. I’d brought a few books and a couple of newspapers with me to the retreat, and that was enough reading material for me: I didn’t also need the entire universe of free online periodicals and blogs. I was staying in the retreat house with 17 other women, and that was companionship enough for me: I didn’t also need the social reinforcement of email, Facebook and Twitter.
But as so often happens after retreats of any kind, the question was how to maintain it once I got home.
Being self-employed as a writer, I don’t feel the same guilt as an office worker might when I occasionally log onto Facebook during the workday – as I see it, Facebook is the equivalent for me of water cooler conversation, the kind of social break that renews my energy for the next segment of work I need to do – but it would still be better if I used it less during work hours. Email isn’t so easy, of course, since that’s how I communicate with clients about ongoing and upcoming assignments. If I put too many restrictions on my own use of email, I won’t get any work anymore.
But weekends and evenings are another story. I’m trying to implement a new habit of shutting down my computer by 6 p.m. and staying away from it for the next two or three hours; a quick check-in before bed for email and other messages is okay. On weekends, I would really like to step away altogether from the Internet and all its potential for hyperactive distraction, just as I did at the retreat.
True, not all email communication is frivolous, even during the weekend. But I can try to get away from it a little more. I can try to remold my brain into the neurological patterns it had before there were so many options for communication. And I can hope that in doing so, I find my way to a higher plane of focus and concentration.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while: ever since ten months ago when I traded my desktop computer for an ultralight “notebook”-style laptop. With the rather old-fashioned desktop, which lived permanently in my second-floor home office, hiatuses enforced themselves. I’d walk away from email and Internet simply because I had things to do in other parts of the house.
But the laptop is easy to bring along when I’m in the kitchen, which is where a lot of my non-office time in the house is spent. That means I know as soon as a new email pops onto my screen. I can look up a book on Amazon at a moment’s notice. I can check the weather forecast or see who’s doing what on Facebook – whenever I want to.
And naturally, like just about every other 21st-century Internet user in the world, I eventually realized it was too much. Too much distraction, too much ceaseless information. I was losing my ability to stay inside my own mind and exist without constant input from the outside world – whether the outside world consisted of an email from my sister or an op-ed piece in the New York Times.
I needed a change, and I was able to get a preview of what that might be like last weekend when I went to a retreat house in northeastern Connecticut. I brought my laptop with me because I planned to do a lot of writing, but I didn’t know if it was even possible to get on line from the retreat house and I didn’t plan to ask. This would be my enforced 48-hour fast from the Internet.
Except fate intervened in a small way when on Friday night, one of the retreat leaders asked me for some writing exercises and I thought of one I’d read about in a newspaper essay recently. I couldn’t reiterate the exercise myself; she’d need to see the original essay if she wanted to use it. “Just tell me the name of the essayist and the publication where you saw it, and I’ll get it on line,” she said. “This house has wireless access, you know. The password is the same is the phone number.”
It was too late to block my ears and sing, but I did not want to know that, because I didn’t want any temptations. I told the retreat leader that she could use my computer, but she’d have to access the article herself; I didn’t even want the little number popping up on my screen telling me how many new emails I had. I didn’t want even the slightest temptation to hop on line.
And for the rest of the weekend, I didn’t. Even after having been given the password, I stayed away, and it felt wonderful. My mind felt clearer without so much information to choose from. I’d brought a few books and a couple of newspapers with me to the retreat, and that was enough reading material for me: I didn’t also need the entire universe of free online periodicals and blogs. I was staying in the retreat house with 17 other women, and that was companionship enough for me: I didn’t also need the social reinforcement of email, Facebook and Twitter.
But as so often happens after retreats of any kind, the question was how to maintain it once I got home.
Being self-employed as a writer, I don’t feel the same guilt as an office worker might when I occasionally log onto Facebook during the workday – as I see it, Facebook is the equivalent for me of water cooler conversation, the kind of social break that renews my energy for the next segment of work I need to do – but it would still be better if I used it less during work hours. Email isn’t so easy, of course, since that’s how I communicate with clients about ongoing and upcoming assignments. If I put too many restrictions on my own use of email, I won’t get any work anymore.
But weekends and evenings are another story. I’m trying to implement a new habit of shutting down my computer by 6 p.m. and staying away from it for the next two or three hours; a quick check-in before bed for email and other messages is okay. On weekends, I would really like to step away altogether from the Internet and all its potential for hyperactive distraction, just as I did at the retreat.
True, not all email communication is frivolous, even during the weekend. But I can try to get away from it a little more. I can try to remold my brain into the neurological patterns it had before there were so many options for communication. And I can hope that in doing so, I find my way to a higher plane of focus and concentration.
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