On A Minor Fast

I went on a little fast today. It lasted seven hours. But before you snicker at my pompous announcement of insignificant renunciation, do consider that I did not give up food or drink for that length of time. (Indeed, I made myself a four-egg omelette in that period and ate it with gusto.) Rather, I gave up the Internet for that duration; I did not check email; I did not look at Facebook or Twitter. And I did not do this while being confined to a Zone of No Wi-Fi. Rather, I did it at home, with a broadband internet connection in working order.

Ready to dispense accolades now?

In the spring of 2009, as I sought to make a book deadline, I first tried to impose internet fasts on myself; I was only intermittently successful. I pulled off a few eight-hour abstentions, starting at 10AM and going till 6PM. I found them tremendously productive: I got long stretches of writing accomplished, and on my breaks, for diversion, read through a stack of unread periodicals. But I found it too hard; and soon, my resolve faltered, and I returned to the bad old days.

Since then, I have never managed to internet fast voluntarily. When I have, it’s been because I did not have a working connection–perhaps I was flying across, or to, continents, perhaps I was in a national park. When I got connectivity, I checked back in. In 2012, I bought a smartphone, and put myself further along the road to perdition. For on the  phone, I installed Facebook and Twitter apps–and the GMail client. Now, there was no getting away from the constant check-in: waiting for a bus, a doctor’s appointment, on a subway above ground. I had willingly, deliberately brought home, much closer to me, that which I had already sensed often made me come undone.

These complaints about digital distraction are not new; many, like me, write similar plaintive notes. But we cannot seem to do without it all: the email, the constant monitoring of a timeline or a newsfeed. I certainly rely upon Facebook and Twitter to post links to my blog posts, and remain infected by an unshakable anxiety about utter and total anonymity were I to stop doing so.

This past spring and summer, in an effort to inject some discipline into my writing habits, I began working in forty-five minute blocks; I would set a timer on my phone and resolve to work for that period without interruption. For a few weeks, this method worked astonishingly well. And then, again, my resolve decayed, and I slowly began to drift back to the constantly interrupted writing session, a nightmare of multiple tabs open at once, each monitored for update and interruption.

My sabbatical is over; a full-time teaching load is upon me again; my daughter wants, and deserves, more attention; time for writing is ever more precious.

What did I get done today? Some writing; some reading. Nothing more could be asked for.

Now, to do it again.