Hi! It’s me! Here to tell you all about my month without the internet. How did it go? I was not completely successful in quitting the internet. Can anyone really be successful in quitting the internet? Well, yes, I think they can. I was not, at least not in four weeks.
But a lot of pretty interesting things happened, just by me declaring I was done with the internet. The magical analog world sighed in relief and said, Finally. I declared my intention to stop checking email so frequently, to stop reading every article and essay and newsletter that appeared before me, to stop watching dog videos and movie trailers. And even though I was not able to completely stop,1 I experienced an internal shift just from deciding to quit, and being aware of how I was spending my time.
Even though I still looked at the internet, I looked at it a lot less. I probably could have tracked my usage and shown you a neat comparison chart, where the amount of time I spent online was drastically reduced from January to February, but it didn't occur to me to track it because I thought I was going to be so offline that it wouldn't even be a question. Ha. Optimistic planning Julie always assumes she’s going to prevail.
I started the month by beginning a rewrite of a middle grade novel I wrote last summer. I had a thought: I should finish this rewrite in February. That would be such a cool way to tell all of you about the benefits of stepping away from the internet.
Then I realized that would also be a cool way of assigning myself artificial deadlines for external praise. And that the rewrite was going to take as long as it would take. Maybe it would take a month, maybe not. (It is not done yet, as of this writing, so that’s how that turned out.)
I started by rereading my novel and doing the Matt Bell Refuse to Be Done second draft method of plotting my novel after I’d written a first draft. This was a good project to start with, since it was an offline project, and therefore easier to stay away from the internet. Still, it was hard. I kept feeling distracted. I was trying to figure out a plot, and I had more questions than answers.
One night, early in the month, I was out walking Cosmo, and looked up to see the stars brighter than I remember seeing them in my suburban neighborhood. They were so beautiful. Looking up at them, walking my terrific dog, I felt small but supported. I felt like they were shining their light onto me, onto us.
They were talking to me.
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