A Break from the Interwebs!

Hey, it’s that time again. My 3rd annual “freedom-from-internet-addiction” month.

A couple of years ago, I realized that I was getting more and more sucked into the virtual world, and I wanted to address it. I decided that when I went on my family vacation I’d give my wife and kids more of my undivided attention, so I took my 3 weeks of vacation largely off the internet, and added a week to round out the month.

The result of that has started to become an anticipated tradition for me. This July I’ll again shut down my Twitter and Facebook, stop blogging, stay away from mindlessly surfing the ‘net, and check my email only sparingly, as needed. I’m looking forward to getting my face out of the screen and onto the world—looking more at people, and looking more to God.

But why do I write this? It’s not because I think it’s heroic, or that you should care about what I’m doing this month. I’m sure you won’t miss me (I’ve even auto-scheduled some repeats of past blog posts to show up through July). I don’t write this because I think you care about what I’m doing, but because njoy electronic cigarette I care about you.

Maybe this will encourage or challenge you. Though I’ve yet to pull off a perfect “break” for the last 3 years, this time away always resets my life; it allows me to remember that I’m not that important and that the networked world can live without me. And whether we take a month, a week or even a few days break, I think it’s important to occasionally unplug from cyberspace and plug into actual-space; to confront some of the possibly unhealthy patterns we’ve developed; to free up physical and mental and emotional bandwidth to focus on stuff that matters—or even stuff that doesn’t matter—that is right in front of us.

This has provided a time for me to not get distracted in the slow moments, but to embrace them and rediscover the little joys and surprises that I often miss when my face is buried in my iPhone or MacBook. If this idea is somehow strangely attractive to you (even while you may be horrified at the thought), I challenge you to set a period of time aside—maybe even only one day—to unplug, so that you can plug back in!

See you in August!

Tim