Unplugged

Hello, internet!  I'm back.

It's been twenty days since I went online.   Though I missed some of the things I do online, I found it utterly refreshing not to be online.  The only thing I allowed myself during this "vacation," was to check and write emails on my iPod and check in on GetGlue. 

Surprisingly, I find myself not keen on keeping up my old online habits.  At present, it's a tedious task for me to even type in facebook on my browser.  I'd rather keep my online presence on blogger, twitter, tumblr, YM and pinterest.  I'm this close to deleting my FB account, but we have business pages there so I'm held hostage by that.  That and the scores of possible clients who are hooked on FB.  (Much as I want to let go, our business relies heavily on our online presence and activity.)

Social networks have claimed a huge chunk of my day, and I'm pleased that I have reduced that hold to about an hour or so in a day.  I've been able to read more, finish books I've been putting off.  I now have more focus because I'm no longer distracted by notifications and pings on my computer.  (Except the alerts from WhatsApp on my phone, but those are live friends!)

One thing I missed, that I used to have a lot of time for before the advent of  FB et al, was listening to audiobooks.  I used to have audiobooks of Walt Whitman's, Yeats and Emily Dickinson's poetry in the car (proven and fantastic method of curtailing road rage, trust me).   I have amassed a lot of unheard audiobooks, and the first few ones I loaded on my iPod was Casanova and Sherlock Holmes Rail Way Mysteries, both read by Benedict Cumberbatch.   (He and Martin Freeman are my current celebrity obsessions and deserve a blog entry all by themselves.)  I couldn't really concentrate when I played them on my computer because I'd inevitably get distracted by social networks.

Now, I can blissfully listen to them while keeping my hands occupied with something else.

I strongly recommend unplugging for a spell.