To tweet or not to tweet....

So I've been thinking about getting back on Twitter. I tweeted years ago and left because the volume of tweets and information coming at me was overwhelming. It just was all too much. But lately I've been thinking it might be time to head back in and try again. I subscribe to Wil Wheaton on Facebook and often what he posts is a response to a tweet that has come through, now because I am not on Twitter I can't go see what the whole thread was and that bothers me. Friends of mine who are more active with their writing promote pieces through Twitter and this gives them a more robust readership base. And I've been thinking about getting off of Facebook and this would give me a way of posting when a new blog went up.

Did you catch that last line and have to re-read it? Yes, I'm thinking about getting off Facebook. Or at least severely limiting my time there. Now this isn't a new idea, in fact I blogged about it almost two years ago here. And that blog is all of the reasons why I am thinking of getting off, but two years later. It just goes to show how addictive it is for me. I knew back then that I was probably online too much but didn't do a lot about it except ponder it for awhile. But Facebook is a huge time sink for me. After I check in on friends, news, pages I follow, games I play and then start the cycle all over again and again I will discover that I've lost the majority of the day. I've also discovered that I am getting to the point where doing one thing at a time is really difficult. Even if I am enjoying the book I am reading I find myself reaching for my phone to check in on Facebook "real quick."

And I have finally reached the point where it bothers me more than the idea of not being online bothers me. I'm trying to look at it realistically and know that I can't really just quit. I have friends that I only have contact with through Facebook and I would miss them terribly if I didn't get to talk to them a few times a week. C is about to go back to school and there is great comfort as a parent to being able to see that your child is safe someplace, even if it's from seeing that they are online. So I am trying to think of the ways to limit my time online, but still keep the positive aspects of the time online. I've come up with a few but there are other areas I am still experimenting with and this blog is one of them.

The blog itself is online, of course, I also have a Facebook page that promotes the blog and lets people know when a new piece is up and ready to read and there is my personal feed as well that I use to let people who don't follow the blog know when a piece I really want to call attention to goes up. So how do I do all of that without Facebook? Twitter? Maybe...Like I said at the beginning I used to tweet. When Twitter was first starting to be a blip on people's radar Brent told me I should tweet. He thought it was perfect for me.  My husband thinks I am funny and that the little quick tweets would be right up my alley so I tried it out.

I did the typical thing of following friends that were there (not a lot at the time, Twitter hadn't blown up yet) and picking up a few celebrities that I thought would be fun to watch. I discovered that someone needs to help Kirstie Alley with her internal to external filter. John Mayer writes wonderful song lyrics but is a real asshole. And that I was not beyond a fangirl squee when Stephen Colbert started following me! And then I discovered that there was just too much noise on Twitter. Too many tweets coming in all of the time. It started to feel like a job to try and follow them. To read EVERYTHING. Now what everyone says is that you shouldn't even try. But how in the world can you do that? How do you pick and choose what to read and what not to? How do you not get pulled in to hours and hours of reading?

Which then turns my Twitter idea into a really bad one for limiting time online. I see the future where I would just be switching Facebooking for Tweeting and what would I gain? More readers for my blog? Maybe. But I'm not sure I want that either. Like I posted yesterday I like that the people who read my work here are friends. I like that we are having a conversation of sorts. And that would change if more people I didn't know started reading my work. Yes, there is a part of me that thinks it would be great, and it would be wonderful to start a base for any fiction I might release, but this blog is also extraordinarily personal at times and I am not sure how comfortable I am flinging my doors open for the world. So for right now I am in limbo. Transition period ahead. I went ahead and picked a Twitter name for the blog, just in case, but I'm not going to do anything with it until September at the earliest. Why September? Well...

August is going to be the month of unplugging(ish). I will be online for an hour or so in the morning and then again in the afternoon. The phone will be kept in my purse and not in my hand. The computer will be used for writing with Facebook turned off except during those two times. I will continue to post my picture of the day. To post my blog to my pages. To check in with friends. But I will do it in confined time periods. It's how I quit smoking so we will see how it works for quitting an online time suck addiction. And then we will see what rises up and takes up the time. What fills the void. What have I been blocking out because I have been filling my time with noise? So for now no Twitter. We will see what happens later, and of course, I will keep you all posted.

Just not all the time....

I'm wired in....

We went and saw The Social Network this week. I highly recommend the movie. It's funny, it's quick, it's very Aaron Sorkin. But this isn't a movie review. There was a line in the movie to describe coders when they are deep in work: wired in. You would see the guy sitting at the computer, headphones on, screen filled with lines of code, giant caffeinated beverage next to him and people would be told, "Don't bother so and so he's wired in" This line has really stuck with me as I have been spending some time evaluating how wired in I am.

Most of you that read this blog know me and know me well enough not to be shocked by what I am about to say. I am online almost constantly. If I don't have my laptop on I am checking the internet via my phone. And if for some reason (flying, movie, sleep, trivia contest in a bar) I have to have my phone off the first thing I do when I am free again is check in. It's almost a nervous tick now. And as most of you who know me also know, once I feel like I am doing things automatically and not really thinking about them, then I feel like I need to change.

For the past few weeks I have been turning over in my head ideas for how I am going to spend my time now that Brent is off of sabbatical and I am on my own. So I started down the list of things I want/need/like to do.

Writing. One of my goals for this year is to get something I've written published, so obviously writing takes a high place on the list.

Work outs. I need to drop a couple pounds that found their way back to me and I need to get back to the level of fitness I was at before August so extra time at the gym is back on the list.

Work. There are clients to be taken care of so of course anytime I have a client that becomes the priority.

Household. The housework and errands in maintaining the house need to be done so that's on the list as well.

Reading. I have stopped reading at the volume that I used to. Darned internet and it's quick short articles have sapped my staying power with a book, so I want to put some real unplugged reading time back on the list.

Photography. My 365 challenge from last year sparked something in me that I didn't think was still there, so I want to make sure I take some time to take more pictures, maybe even a class.

Visiting with friends. Now that my schedule is a little more free during the day I want to make sure I take advantage of the time and have lunch with friends a few times a month. Or even maybe once a week, depending on when I can corral everyone else's schedules.

And I would like to get back into hiking. So just a few things on that list!

As I am looking at all of those things that I want to do I see that the internet really isn't there. Now I know me and I know that's not really true. I will want to to check in on Facebook and see what is happening with my friends from other parts of the state, country and world and since those updates are happening all day every day how do I handle that part? How do I get on, check in and get out? Because what I end up doing is chatting here and there, reading this and that, playing a few (dozen) rounds of Bejeweled and before I know it the day is gone. Hmm....so what is my balance here?

I thought about limiting the time I am online. Maybe an hour in the morning, an hour at night sort of thing. To that end I moved my laptop to the office and plugged it in to a keyboard and mouse and am treating it sort of like a desktop unit. But then the challenge is what happens in the evening when I want to do something online that my phone can't handle. Upload my pictures, watch a video, read a news story that somehow has flash in it so my phone won't open the page. What do I do then? Do I go into the study and do my thing then go back out to the living room? Do I just wait until the next day? And have I forgotten how to just do one thing at a time? Just watch TV without watching TV, reading a magazine and surfing the web at the same time?

Then there is this other piece. Christopher is on Facebook and I can "see" when he is online. Now most of the time I don't do anything about it, every once in awhile I will open chat and ask him a question if I need to know something, but for the most part I just notice that he is there. If he needs to ask me something he is much more likely to text me than chat so having my computer off or in the other room doesn't prevent him from reaching me if he needs to, but it does prevent me from having that one piece of connectedness. And honestly I am not sure I am ready to give that up. I know he is thousands of miles away, but just knowing that at the moment he is online and I am online makes me somehow feel like he is still close. Do I want to give that up as well?

I don't have answers yet. I don't know what all I will do about this. But I have plans and ideas. I will be trying them out over the next few weeks to see what works best for me. I want to add back in things that I am missing in my life and staying "wired in" doesn't work for that. But I need to figure out just how much I can unplug without feeling like I am missing something there as well. For now I am leaning toward a schedule. Drop Brent off at work, go to the gym, come home and get cleaned up, write, handle household chores, read, random things, go pick up Brent sort of thing.

What do you think? Are you too wired in as well or have you successfully unplugged? Or do you even think you would ever want to unplug? I will keep you all posted, I need to write after all...

And hey! Guess what? Work series is back next week! Count on it!