I'm unplugging.
No, not from the blog (though it might seem that way most of the time lately). What I'm doing -- brace yourself -- is disconnecting my home internet.
The spur for this decision was financial, as my home internet bill recently rocketed up to sixty-three dollars a month. That's just the internet. I knew that if I called the local monopoly and tried to cancel, they'd lower my rates. But then the more I started thinking about it, the more I wondered what my life would be like without internet at home.
Here's the thing: Having home internet allows me to do things like look up stuff immediately, download and upload student papers, order library books, maintain my course website, answer e-mails from my students and other assorted university folk -- all without having to go into the office. I can do it any day of the week, any time, day or night. That's a good thing.
Except when it's not, right? Being available 24/7 is a decidedly mixed blessing.
And then there's all the stuff that's just a drain: too much time on the web, watching TV shows I don't care about, watching videos of nothing important, checking Facebook gods only know how many times a day. Yes, I tried the thing where you install limits on the biggest time-suck sites. Except that I now just go in and dismantle these things. I have no self-control. And I figure I spent 15 hours a week, at least, doing things that don't matter, and that I can't remember 15 minutes later.
In short, for me, home internet provides marginal convenience at considerable expense, in many senses of the word. Hence, the grand experiment in unplugging. Yes, I'll still have internet at the office (I'm there four days a week), not to mention at various coffee shops that I frequent a couple times a week, as well as via my phone. It's not like I'll be out of touch. But what I won't be able to do is come home from work, turn on the computer, and piss away hours every evening. I'm interested to see what happens. What will my brain do without the constant distraction? What could I do with 15 more hours a week?
I'll be sure to use some of that extra time to keep you updated. From a coffee shop, that is.
9 comments:
Wow -- I'll be interested to hear how this goes! I sometimes look back fondly on my days in grad school when I had dial-up internet on my single phone line. I'd dial up once an evening, download my emails, do anything else that needed doing, and then "hang up" the internet. Those were also the days when I had a desk top computer, and so if I needed to be on the computer, I was sitting at my desk. None of this carrying the laptop around, always being online. It really was much saner, with no multi-tasking. Good for you for taking this step!
Good luck! I am too far from work and too coffee-averse to work in coffee shops but would otherwise be tempted.
This is a great idea. Like WN, I had dial-up until I started my job eight years ago--no wonder I was able to spend so much time on the phone with friends, and so much time journaling and reading novels! (I'm not sure I actually got more writing done, being a master of finding other things to fill my time with, but they were arguably more worthwhile ways of time-wasting.)
I look forward to hearing how it goes.
Yes, this sounds like an interesting experiment. My use of home Internet is kind of the opposite: I use it more to deal with work-related narishkeit, so when I'm in my office at the lab I can do real substantive work.
What PP says - which makes me wonder whether the differences in work patterns and university building time between sciences and arts/social sciences (which I notice, working in a 'mixed' department) extend to internet habits. Hmm...
You mentioned self-control apps, but have you tried SelfControl? I use it, and as far as I know, once you start it, there's no way to disable it. http://selfcontrolapp.com/
My fear would be that I'd end up spending more monthly at the coffee shop than I do for the home internet!
I do this periodically (usually during the summer when I don't have as much student and administrative work to keep up with). It's good for the soul!
I usually have a period of withdrawal, but after a few days, I always find myself feeling very grateful (I read more, get outside more...).
My impression is that humanities scholars can get a lot of work done without Internet access. For me to do real writing, I absolutely need Internet access to search for and download papers and other technical information as I go along.
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