One month without the internet

Well, this ends my one month of limited internet use.

Here are a few observations.

I jonesed for the internet for at least the first week. I’m not going to tell you it was a detox from an addiction, but it was a real sense of withdrawal. There is a particular feeling the internet gives me relating to multi-tasking that is a sense of electronic control, which I really missed. In fact, watching two or more TV shows at the same time (channel surfing) gives a very similar feeling.

I really missed Andrew Sullivan, Facebook, and Twitter, for their rate of updating and curating of internet content. I also missed having them on my smart-phone, as they were something to look at for a few minutes during boring moments and down time… I found myself looking at my smart phone… for nothing. That habit lessened after the first week.

One of the things I gained during this month was a renewed sense of the personal and the private. I would experience a moment which I would normally share with my 662 closest friends on facebook or to all my 289 followers on twitter, and I didn’t share it… instead I savored it privately, which is really much more important.

Additionally, I found myself emailing individual people something I wished to share with them, and we’d actually have an email conversation about the thing, instead of me putting it up on facebook and a bunch of people “liking” it just to let me know they’d seen me post it.

One of the things I’d hoped for was that I’d be more productive. Well, I have managed to start a writing project placing The Book of Revelation in its historical context, and read three books related to said project.

Finally, here are some faith related things I would have shared via facebook or twitter had I been using them. The Longest Sermon I’ve preached at St. Stephen, a pretty good sermon on Evangelism, and finally a Newsletter article which a colleague described as “eloquent and uplifting.”