When I decided to give up all non-essential internet for the 47 calendar days that is Lent I thought it would be difficult but that I would manage it. I knew I relied very heavily on the internet - for entertainment and the generally making-of-my-life-easier. But I didn't realise how much I relied on it. The first night of my internet fast I dreamt about checking my Facebook page. I found myself questioning my decision when I had to stand in the queue at the cinemas to buy my ticket instead of having it ready from ordering online.
I had visions of breaking my internet habit quickly and using my free time to read copious amounts of high brow literature, finish several embroidery projects, bake fresh bread every day, finally commit to running regularly and starting to meditate. What really happened wasn't as serene and self-empowering. The first week I replaced the internet with junk food, downing an entire packet of chocolate biscuits and a large packet of chips the first day at work when the internet wasn't so easy to ignore.
Once I got past the junk food phase I replaced the internet with television where I watched hours of The Block and My Kitchen Rules. I also watched the entire seven seasons of Buffy resulting in the Facebook dreams being replaced by Buffy dreams and I got the songs from Once More With Feeling stuck in my head for a fortnight.
This suggested to me that I may have a bit of problem disconnecting from technology and that by replacing the internet with television I may have missed the whole point of what I was trying to achieve so I set up some new rules. I had five weeks left of Lent at this stage and so decided to wean myself off television one hour at a time. The first week I was allowed five hours a day, the next week four a day and so on until I would, theoretically, be down to one hour a day by the last week of Lent.
This proved to be more difficult than I suspected.
It was fine during the working week, but the first Saturday was a nightmare and I had the horrifying realisation that I was using all this technology to quite the voices in my head. You know the ones... They spend all their time second guessing you and bring up all the things you've done wrong in your life. There weren't any dreams about Facebook or Buffy that night, instead I kept waking up anxious about work, money, uni, life in general. I had about three hours sleep that night. The next day I re-wrote the rules again and gave myself a Sunday reprieve. Once a week I allowed myself as much TV as I wanted. I also let go of the idea of getting rid of technology all-together as it was literally sending me mad without.
Instead I officially crossed the line from youth market to adult and spent the remainder of my Lent listing to an awful lot of ABC Radio National. I started to bring up current affairs topics I heard when listening to Amanda Vanstone (maybe the sleepless anxious nights or Buffy induced ear-worms weren't so bad).
There were a couple of slips along the way. I had a couple of sneaky Google searches (one to double check how long Lent actually went for in case I got it wrong... I didn't). I listened to some old podcasts on my ipod during a early morning flight. And I checked my email a little more frequently than was allowed by my predetermined rules. But am proud to say I didn't access social media once and didn't watch any on-demand tv.
I did miss a lot of things happening in the world. Mostly things happening in my friends lives. A visit with The Hungry Babushka interstate made this plainly obvious when not a conversation went by where the phrase, 'did you hear... oh yeah, you're not on Facebook' came up. For all it's intrusiveness this website is clearly essential to my social life and without it I felt very cut off from my friends. I also discovered too late there was a Ted X conference at my university so I missed the registration. And that for the first time in my degree three of my classes decided to integrate social networking as teaching tools.
But I think this has been a good experiment. I'm very glad I did it. I did manage to finish a very large, very dull high brow novel (Czech actually, which I think gives me bonus points). I did bake a couple of batches of bagels and a batch of biscuits. I did one week of running before it started to rain for a month and I caught the flu. I've actually got a fairly good head start on my uni assignments. And I can comfortably walk away from my computer without feeling the need to compulsively check Facebook, Pinterest and my blog analytics.
It seems important to remember how easy our lives are. With so much to entertain us, and inform us, and aid in our communication. So many shortcuts to make our lives easier. 'Struggling' without social media for a couple of weeks is not very high up on the list of difficulties I could be facing.
This has given me an idea for a future project, but I am going to file that one away for a later date. In the meantime, I am very glad to have my internet back, but may still try to not use it quite as much as I was.
I had visions of breaking my internet habit quickly and using my free time to read copious amounts of high brow literature, finish several embroidery projects, bake fresh bread every day, finally commit to running regularly and starting to meditate. What really happened wasn't as serene and self-empowering. The first week I replaced the internet with junk food, downing an entire packet of chocolate biscuits and a large packet of chips the first day at work when the internet wasn't so easy to ignore.
Once I got past the junk food phase I replaced the internet with television where I watched hours of The Block and My Kitchen Rules. I also watched the entire seven seasons of Buffy resulting in the Facebook dreams being replaced by Buffy dreams and I got the songs from Once More With Feeling stuck in my head for a fortnight.
This suggested to me that I may have a bit of problem disconnecting from technology and that by replacing the internet with television I may have missed the whole point of what I was trying to achieve so I set up some new rules. I had five weeks left of Lent at this stage and so decided to wean myself off television one hour at a time. The first week I was allowed five hours a day, the next week four a day and so on until I would, theoretically, be down to one hour a day by the last week of Lent.
This proved to be more difficult than I suspected.
It was fine during the working week, but the first Saturday was a nightmare and I had the horrifying realisation that I was using all this technology to quite the voices in my head. You know the ones... They spend all their time second guessing you and bring up all the things you've done wrong in your life. There weren't any dreams about Facebook or Buffy that night, instead I kept waking up anxious about work, money, uni, life in general. I had about three hours sleep that night. The next day I re-wrote the rules again and gave myself a Sunday reprieve. Once a week I allowed myself as much TV as I wanted. I also let go of the idea of getting rid of technology all-together as it was literally sending me mad without.
Instead I officially crossed the line from youth market to adult and spent the remainder of my Lent listing to an awful lot of ABC Radio National. I started to bring up current affairs topics I heard when listening to Amanda Vanstone (maybe the sleepless anxious nights or Buffy induced ear-worms weren't so bad).
There were a couple of slips along the way. I had a couple of sneaky Google searches (one to double check how long Lent actually went for in case I got it wrong... I didn't). I listened to some old podcasts on my ipod during a early morning flight. And I checked my email a little more frequently than was allowed by my predetermined rules. But am proud to say I didn't access social media once and didn't watch any on-demand tv.
I did miss a lot of things happening in the world. Mostly things happening in my friends lives. A visit with The Hungry Babushka interstate made this plainly obvious when not a conversation went by where the phrase, 'did you hear... oh yeah, you're not on Facebook' came up. For all it's intrusiveness this website is clearly essential to my social life and without it I felt very cut off from my friends. I also discovered too late there was a Ted X conference at my university so I missed the registration. And that for the first time in my degree three of my classes decided to integrate social networking as teaching tools.
But I think this has been a good experiment. I'm very glad I did it. I did manage to finish a very large, very dull high brow novel (Czech actually, which I think gives me bonus points). I did bake a couple of batches of bagels and a batch of biscuits. I did one week of running before it started to rain for a month and I caught the flu. I've actually got a fairly good head start on my uni assignments. And I can comfortably walk away from my computer without feeling the need to compulsively check Facebook, Pinterest and my blog analytics.
It seems important to remember how easy our lives are. With so much to entertain us, and inform us, and aid in our communication. So many shortcuts to make our lives easier. 'Struggling' without social media for a couple of weeks is not very high up on the list of difficulties I could be facing.
This has given me an idea for a future project, but I am going to file that one away for a later date. In the meantime, I am very glad to have my internet back, but may still try to not use it quite as much as I was.
Great post - I love all the things you were planning to do and then what you actually did - junk food and tv. I think it proves that in today's fast paced society of deadlines and high stress - you really need or we have become really conditioned to needing veg out in front of the tv or internet time.
ReplyDeleteAs for lent as you know I gave up squat and that makes me very happy. I don't feel indulged just happily satisified that I have eated as much chocolate, drunk as much softdrink and alcohol, watched as many movies and had my head glued to the internet on my laptop for unlimited amounts of time over the last 47 days. I did finish one of my massive pile of books to read. Then proceeded to finish another book I just got over the weekend.
Cheers
Skye
I can understand how you feel breaking an internet routine which has become a major part of our lives. I wonder what would happen if for some reason it was suddenly switched off what would we do with the extra spare time? Perhaps like you in the beginning we would fill the void with TV. The media moguls would love that with more political biased news to brain wash the population with polls, lots of polls!! Maybe we would all go for a walk and the streets would be filled with throngs of people.
DeleteMy non swearing promise for lent did achieve a result.I did let the odd profanity go when I stuck my leg with a sharp branch in the garden. However, I did improve my vocabulary by omitting words that have no place in normal speech. So lent can have an important place in society even if its not for religious reasons.
Derek
I like the idea of streets full of people because the internet has gone down - there's a short story in that definitely!
DeleteI'm sorry for you missing the TEDex opportunity but well done. I made it through lent without soft drink (which also unfortunately meant no rum too) well sort of. I too had one slip thanks to Susie's rum punch and a miss calculation of days by Mum. But apart from that no soft drink. And the good thing about that is that a week on nothing has changed. Still no soft drink. If there is a downside to my abstinence, my consumption of white wine did increase. Maybe that should be the objective for next for next years lent? Mmm maybe not.
ReplyDeleteHeather