Terry Dock's Den

For about a week I took a break off the Internet. I had decided to have two weeks off to take a step back, reflect on my work, and plan the next stage, but I ended up spending the first week obsessively checking e-mails, staring at my Smashwords and Amazon KDP dashboards, analyzing stats on my blog, tweaking campaigns on Goodreads and Project Wonderful—in short, I did not write a word and yet was stressed out of my mind. So on Sunday evening of the first week I raised both fists to the starry night sky and swore, ‘Enough!’ I turned off the iMac and pledged not to turn it back on until a week had passed.

Now a week offline has gone by, and I’m back. Here are my thoughts on this experiment.

First, there was a bit of frustration. When I’m online, whenever I wonder about something—anything!—I bloody google it or check it on Wikipedia. Now as it turns out, you cannot do that offline. Books are of limited use, and they come in even more limited supply. I know there are things such as libraries, but seriously? I cannot pop by the library whenever I wonder about some specific details about the universe. So, yes, I was a bit frustrated.

Second, the frustration is not that bad. Because, let’s face it: not everything I want to know is something I need to know. Sometimes, letting go of desire is not a bad thing. There is a stress associated with desire, and lack of stress is kind of the point of a vacation—or rather, in my case, a staycation. For instance, the other day I wondered about Celts and their hair. How did the ancient Celts style them? I had no idea. But since I was not allowed anywhere near a browser, I had no way to know. In any case, I didn’t need to know. More importantly, I didn’t need to know right away. I could wait until that time when I was allowed back online to check it out (as it turns out, we don’t know much about Celtic ‘dos anyway).

Third, I noticed a decrease in the amount of stress and—more importantly—guilt I felt. Not working makes me nervous. It hasn’t always been so, but now it is. So, being sat in front of the iMac, where I do the writing, and not doing any writing-related stuff makes me nervous and makes me feel guilty. Being away from that darn computer was a relief. I was away from the office. (Having an actual office—a room where I only do work stuff—would help greatly, but that’s not possible unfortunately.)

Now that’s for the past week, but what about the future?

Well, I think there are three needs I have to balance: the need for concentration, the need for communication, and the need for knowledge.

I need to concentrate to work efficiently. Humans did not evolve to multitask. Sure, we can walk and talk at the same time. But that’s not multitasking. Writing a book, browsing the web, updating Twitter, checking my Facebook feed—that’s multitasking. And it does not work.

I could probably walk and write books (I’d need to build a workstation on a treadmill, but that’s doable)—I would likely write better books if I did (read this article). But googling Celtic hairdos and writing fiction don’t mix. So, I need to focus. No more checking e-mails or Facebook or anything of the sort while I’m supposed to write. From now on, I will only check e-mails at designated times: morning, noon, and evening (before calling it a day). That also means I’ve turned off all push notifications on my iPhone, and it’s no longer set to automatically check for e-mails. I’ll do that manually, thank you very much.

There will be an exception to this, and I’ve decided it will be Twitter. Now that may surprise you, but I believe Twitter is perfect for us ape-types. Look at primates: they damn well tweet all the time. Sure, that takes the form of physical contact, eye contact, and vocal contact, but they communicate all the time. It’s part of what we are, as social animals and primates: we need to have a constant line of communication open to our ape buddies. The important thing about that line of communication, though, is that it’s not a way to convey information. Most of the time, communication only serves one purpose: to ensure that the comm channel is open. In linguistics, they call it phatic communication, from a Greek verb that means to show oneself.

I remember reading an article (I think it was in the New York Times, but unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it and can’t seem to find it) about Twitter, where the author explained that tweeting was like tugging at your mommy’s skirt to show her that nifty picture you’ve just drawn. I think he was right, and I also think he totally failed to realize it’s the whole point of tweeting and it’s a good, necessary thing for us apes. We don’t swing from tree branches anymore, maintaining constant contact with our peers through calls and yelps—to make sure we are not cut from the group—, but that doesn’t mean the need for phatic expression is gone. On the contrary, we still crave it. We are, however, evolved creatures. We no longer need to paw through our buddies’ scalps to pick their lice. But we still crave the contact. Twitter, I think, provides this. It’s a diffuse, phatic contact with our tribe, and I believe it’s more than enough to satisfy our primal instinctual need for reassurance that, no, we are not lost in the forest, we are still in hearing range of our peers. So, Twitter will stay open on my desktop. I need the phatic link.

Finally, the need for information. While not all I want to know is something I need to know, knowledge is good. Still, I must learn to sort through what is necessary and what is not. What is necessary needs to be researched ASAP. What is not necessary can wait. I can make a note of my desire to know and research it at a more appropriate time. In short, no more ‘OMAGADZ!!! WHAT WERE CELTIC HAIRDOS LIKE?’ and dropping everything to check in the middle of a perfectly nice paragraph of fiction. Instead, I’ll write it down (possibly on a real-life piece of paper so I don’t switch to another application) and wait till I have a moment to check it out.

Well, well… I guess those are my New Year’s resolutions after all. I really think it’s going to help bring focus to my work and also make my off time much more enjoyable. Mixing the two was turning out to be a bit overwhelming, tainting both in an inappropriate way. From now on, I’ll try to keep work work-like and have my free time as work-free as I can manage. Balance is the shit.