Last week was another one of those weeks where I was more or less disconnected from the Internet, and I loved it. Granted, I did get on in the evenings after Simon went to bed so I could post some news on CoasterBuzz, but I didn't read my feeds, look at other news or work on projects, or read work e-mail. I'm always so surprised at how liberating this is, and I wonder why I only end up doing it once a year at most.
Of course, as I tried to catch up this weekend, I also found that it was a hell of a week for technology. Jobs is taking another leave from Apple, the FCC (idiots) approved Comcast + NBC-Universal, Google put Page back in the CEO slot... big stuff. Meanwhile, the beta I posted of POP Forums v9 is getting some nice attention. I tried tonight to dive back in to some project work. Tomorrow I have to catch up on work e-mail and see how things went last week with our new project. I feel so behind!
Staying on top of things has always been one of the bigger challenges in technology, but over the years I've made it a point to try and minimize that challenge by simply paying attention to less. The RSS feeds that I subscribe to don't change a lot. Something has to be really interesting to make the list, and I'm comfortable dropping things that don't interest me. I'm even more narrow about what I follow on Twitter. There really is such a thing as too much information.
I'm generally content with the balance I have, living the connected life and the life that's in front of me. I don't push e-mail to my phone, for example, because when I want to read it, I'll do so. It can wait. I seem to be an exception more than a rule these days. People have abandoned information consumption on their terms in favor of real-time consumption, and it's borderline obsession for some people. I try not to be judgmental about that, but when I encounter people who prefer the bits flowing into their phone over the interaction of me and other humans standing in front of them, I find that annoying.
I need to make it a point to disconnect again, and not wait too long to do so. I try to do it on the weekends, for the most part, but an entire week does feel good.
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