In which the author breaks up with an inanimate object.
I think it's time to step away from the internet for a while.

One reason is that I need to get some work done and the web is my #1 favorite distraction.

Another reason is that I want to get out and socialize more. Lurking online when you're lonely is like eating aspartame when you're hungry — it may scratch the immediate itch, but it doesn't really meet the underlying needs.

Yet another reason is that I'm trying to put more energy into the real-world community I live in, and less into distant ones that I only get to visit occasionally. For the past decade, between a string of LDRs, the Midwest Ale and Four Quarters, my emotional and spiritual home has always been a good day's drive from my temporal address, and I'm sick of it. So I'm trying to focus on making my everyday life here in Austin as awesome as possible — and, despite the illusion of immediacy, MetaFilter and Zompist and blah blah blah aren't part of everyday life in Austin.

I'm keeping my email accounts. Nobody can survive without email these days. (Even Don Knuth, everyone's token example of Life Without Email, hasn't really given it up — just gotten important enough that he can make his secretary read it for him.)

There's two other applications that I'm on the fence about: LJ and AIM. The problem is, even though I use them 90% for procrastinating, the other 10% of the time I'm using them to keep in touch with old real-life friends who I care a lot about. And even if reading LJ is a horrible time-and-energy drain, posting here is still cheaper than therapy. (Only half kidding.) For now, I'm gonna keep the accounts but cut my friends list down to a bare minimum and see how that goes.

I know, I know, that was horribly rude of me. But seriously, it's nothing personal. If it makes you feel better, you should feel free to say nasty, biting things about me in posts that I won't read anyway because I'll be out flying a kite or something.