I know some people like Lawrence Lessig explicitly take time out periods from being online. It seems like a growing thing to do as all of us struggle to find ongoing sustainable ways to live our digital lifestyles for periods that get longer and longer and may well be the rest of our lives. I am no exception to that, I might be one of the worse ones. I wasn’t trying to take time away but it is working out like that. For the rest of the month of December I may or may not be away from my blog, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter et al for days or weeks, with or without warning.
It’s reached the point where I shock myself sometimes when I look at this blog and see that it’s been 2 or 4 or 6 days since the last time I posted. It never feels like it has been that long. This is further evidence that the hamster cage we are all running in might be wearing us out. I’d love to be posting longer, insightful pieces like I tried to do in the past but when it comes down to time to do it, I’m tired and make other decisions.
Added to all this is the ongoing sorting out process as people shift energies amongst their blogs, Twitter, Facebook and all the other ways you can do something online. This will never be settled, the best we can do is to find semi-stable equilibria now and then as the landscape shifts under us again. Off I go, trying to balance my way across the shaking ground.
I see this happening with a lot of folks. I don’t think we’re wired for the constant barrage of IMs, Twitters, Facebook msgs, emails, blogs, etc. that we think we need to keep up on as quickly as possible. I get urged over and over to get onto our internal IM, but I just can’t deal with that level of interrupt. Feeling like we need to keep up creates just that much more stress in our lives – with some of the weirdness going on, do we really want that added stress? Will the general public eventually hit an “I’m full” level and start backing off, or will the stress level start pushing Darwin-esque answers? I’m a little nervous about it, but then some might call me a dinosaur – I work for high-tech, but my cell phone only makes phone calls.