My New Curfew

A few weeks ago, I was without internet or cable for nearly 36 hours. It was a mildly frustrating experience to say the least. I found plenty of things to do, but I kept thinking "Oh, I can do this-- Wait, I need the internet for that." I couldn't check my bank account, check on prescription refills, or watch Netflix or Hulu. It was a little disturbing to realize exactly how much I relied on the internet for actual important things.

On the other hand, I was productive. And since then, I've started trying to stay off the internet on Sundays. I go through and make sure I've responded to or otherwise dealt with all emails, Facebook messages, and so on. My latest thing is to also mark everything read in my Google Reader because a lot of the things I follow are somewhat time sensitive, so hanging on to them for a month in hopes of getting through the 1000+ unread items is pointless, since it's old news by then and I've probably heard it somewhere else by that point anyway.

I've also added a no internet after midnight rule. (Except tonight, apparently, since it's 1AM and I'm typing away.) Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm not addicted to the internet. To borrow the old saying, I'm not an addict, I can quit whenever I want to. The problem is that I don't want to quit. (I also had this problem with Sims, for the record.) I can't count the number of times where I've looked at the time, realized I should really get off the internet, and then looked for one more thing to do on the internet. One more pointless thing that I didn't even really want to do. So I'm on the internet for another hour or two with absolutely nothing to show for it.

My new system is pretty simple. From the time I get up in the morning until midnight, I can use the computer for whatever I want. After midnight, that's it. Computer goes off and I find something else to do, like read a book, watch a show, clean, or anything that doesn't involve the computer. This also goes for iPads, Blackberries, iPod Touches, Kindle Fires, and related devices, though I do watch Netflix after midnight. I guess that could hypothetically lead to me spending eighteen hours looking at Youtube videos, but that never seems to happen. Usually, I'm doing something all day and don't get on the computer until evening. I check my mail, catch up on Twitter and Google Reader, and then it's internet free time. Interestingly enough, I think it's cut down on my time wasters. I find myself avoiding things that are going to suck me in for three hours because oh, look, it's already 11:15 and I need to start thinking about shutting down the computer.

This probably won't always be practical. For instance, if there's something time sensitive that has to be done by 8 AM Monday morning, I'm not going to shut the computer down at midnight on Saturday and just relax for the rest of the weekend....though hopefully ,the "get off the internet" mindset will reduce wasted time. Overall, though, I think a regular forced internet time outs are a good thing. It reminds me that I can take a day off the internet and I'll survive, the internet will survive, and (most likely) nothing disastrous will have occurred.