What did I learn from severely limiting my time online? I’m still unsure. Perhaps on Friday, when I finish this post, I’ll have some answers for myself. I mean, really, I haven’t had much time to reflect, what with all the email checking I’ve been doing lately.

Here are some notes from my diary (diary quotes in purple, my witty and amazing comments the usual gray/black):

Day 1. As soon as I fired up my laptop, the mouse hovered over the Firefox icon, but with a great push of willpower I moved it over to the Microsoft Word icon. So proud of myself.

Right now I’m thinking, yes, I can totally do this. I’m a little worried that there could be urgent emails waiting in my inbox, but really, I’m not the president. I’m not in charge of anything. So I’m a little itchy-twitchy about not getting to check, but at least I’m rational about it (so far).

Besides: I used Z’s entire two-hour nap to work on TBC (The Black City…the title of my, ahem, manuscript). Got the ward thing all figured out, made some little edits. It feels good. And today felt more like a family day. We didn’t do anything special, since Z has a cold, but we hung out all together on the couch after her nap, instead of me rushing off to check email.

Email. Email & my website – those are the two time-sucking culprits. Facebook can take time, but I don’t honestly enjoy it, especially not posting about myself – isn’t that what my blog is for? It’s fun to check up on other people, but I’m usually not on for longer than twenty minutes, & only every couple of days. My Twitter visits are much shorter. If I’m honest I’ll admit that Twitter’s a little intimidating. Intwitteridating?

Anyway, loved my day offline. But I’ve already got a list of email priorities, so I don’t waste time once I finally sign on.

Day 2. Printed out manuscript. Nothing in my diary about internet black-out because I was too busy making manic predictions of how this is the novel that will hit it big. (I am embarrassed to admit this here, which is why you get only summary.)

Day 3. A dream I had – I accidentally checked my email, breaking my hiatus. I was really upset about it in the dream. Then in real life, I had to email a note to P about the potluck, asking her what to bring! I didn’t have her phone number! Husband said it was okay. In my defense, I started drafting a message on paper and was going to make him sign into my email and type it up.

Signing in and seeing all those emails waiting for me (yes, most of them Freecycle) – and then not clicking on them! Difficult. There were two that looked especially interesting. Damn.

Day 4. Here I gripe about the wind (I REALLY HATE THE WIND). I wrote a random poem:

Very few things
disgust me more
than a stuffed animal fallen
on our bathroom floor.

MOVE OVER, W. S. MERWIN. I also complain about how sucky my manuscript is. Honestly, my feelings about it change constantly. What’s the Hamlet quote? I think it goes, “I am but in love with my manuscript north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a piece of crap when I see one.”

I checked email yesterday! Yes! I was supposed to do only one session – at least, that had been my aim, but with the schmooze at P’s & uploading files for the Writer’s Group, I needed both a morning & an afternoon session. Each was about 20 minutes.

It felt pretty good. Lots of support from people emailing me to tell me how they liked that I’m not checking email (and they noted this irony). Some business stuff. Kinda liberating to jot off quick responses & not dilly-dally while writing them.

The diary entry goes on for NINE pages, nearly all of it obsessing about TBC. The lack of emailing and blogging redirects me to the paper diary, I suppose. Also, I talked with another internet-addicted friend on the phone and warned her she might have to check my email for me if things got desperate.

On Friday I’ll post the rest of the wrap-up.