A Cure for Information Overload: Detox and Blogging
Posted in The Gnovis Blog
I’ve been pretty absent from this forum for the past few months. This has nothing to do with my feelings for gnovis or its awesome new issue. It has been because, well…
I am an Internet addict. In the past year or so my Internet use has gone from a nice distraction in an office job to something that has stopped my own creativity.
The answer, for me, was to get back to using the Internet for what it is intended for– sharing useful information (though that is, of course, loosely defined) and not for just filling time or convincing me that someone else out there is way more talented/creative/clever/better than me at crafting/academics/reading/time-management/humor.
Part of moving away from just consuming information was to start producing some of my own web content (follow me, this will make sense in a minute, I swear). My boyfriend and I have started a blog, RobotFoot (new window), all about what we’re doing when we keep the Internet at a nice, comfortable distance.
What we’ve discovered is that a) it hasn’t been so hard to give up the Internet for anything other than targeted searches– things like receipes, reviews, Netflix, Wikipedia, etc– and b) that without sites like NotCot.org (new window) and Etsy.com (new window) we’re more comfortable exploring our own creative sides.
The blog also forces us to sit down and write something every (or, um you know like nearly every) day without the stress of constant comparisons to our favorite blogs. We’re still finding our respective voices, but we’re looking for them. I think that is what matters.