DeKlutter: Vol. 1 Breaking The Habit

At this point, it's safe to say I am addicted to the internet.

The whole end-goal of anyone hoping to be an artist in any medium is to have a positive ratio of creation to consumption. Really, that's a lesson you can apply to most aspects of life, but right now, the focus is on writing.

I browse all my RSS feeds, and wiki-jump through them into more and more articles until I've wasted five hours accomplishing nothing, instead gorging on irrelevant information. I have had this habit since I was in eighth grade, and often would not go outside, in favor of surfing the internet. My brain retains trivia. It makes me useful in esoteric discussions and bar competitions, but non-functional in the real world.

I managed to birth an outline of an issue and six pages of script the other day, because I forcibly removed myself from the internet by going to Border's, where you need T-Mobile to access their wi-fi. I should not need to do this. As such, it's been recommended to me to go on a media fast. For the next five days, I will not be checking my RSS feeds or Facebook. I will not be reading the news. I will not be listening to any non-music radio or podcasts. I will read an hour of fiction for pleasure each night before bed. I will touch no magazines. You will not see me on iChat. Any Twitter updates will be text messages from my phone, and they will be at a greatly reduced number, calculated to only provide useful information so as not to contribute noise to anyone else's influx of information. I will watch no television, but will try to watch at least three fiction movies during the week that I have not yet seen, but are sitting in a pile on my shelf. I will thrive on a low-information diet, and reduce the amount of noise to a more distinct signal. I will still be checking e-mail, but only twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening. I will still be checking my private groupblog, during the time I use to check my mail in the evening.

We will see if the world collapses while I'm gone. Any blogfeeds that, upon my return, have not yielded something particularly valuable for me will be deleted from my GoogleReader.

There will likely be another post or two here, during the week, about my progress as I begin to hack my life in different areas, and of course, this week's Elephant Words, which is going to be based on this picture.

Wish me luck. I'm hoping to emerge from this week with the remainder of The Smoky City Vol. 1 outlined and all of issue one scripted. If you like gangsters and ghosts, you're going to love this comic.