How The Media Blackout Is Going

The bloom is off the rose. As of today, I’m officially tired of my vacation from all media.

But that’s good, actually. That’s an opportunity for me to examine my reaction and figure out what that means. Why am I tired? Why do I want more input?

Here’s what I figure so far: I like to learn and I like to teach. Those are pretty intrinsic to my nature; I’ve been doing both, happily, for many years now. When I’m separated from all media inputs, I can’t learn. That goes against my nature, so it’s not fun.

On the other hand, the first half of this week has shown me that a lack of input can give me a huge amount of focus. I’ve been much less scatter-brained this past week than I usually am. So, clearly, cutting back on media has been helpful. The question is, how much should I cut back?

At this point, I know that I want to cut back on the amount of media I take in each week. I’m planning to establish a budget on media each week: no more than five hours of DVD watching, for example. If I break these limits, nothing will happen; the point is to have a visible limit, so I know when I’m consuming more input than I had planned to.

I’ll see how that goes once I’m back to normal this Saturday. Though I won’t really be “back to normal” until next Monday, since I’ll have a pretty busy Saturday (Otherspace meeting, plus hosting my parents for New Year’s Eve) and Sunday (parents staying through New Year’s Day, and possibly role-playing that evening).

(A few side observations: I haven’t missed the web at all. I have missed e-mail, and I think I didn’t need to eliminate that. I would have benefitted from more contact with people, not less.)