I’m back visiting the Interweb again. And here are the things I learned during lent about not using the internet.
1. I suck at keeping up by reading the newspaper at work.
2. There is a lot of new software updates that give me nifty features I’ve been waiting for.
3. Besides missing a few things in my far off friends lives (sorry Greg and Julie…I just found out about your baby from Rob on Saturday….congrats!!!), I really don’t feel like I missed that much.
In my spare time I read a lot more of the Bible, started writing some stuff I wanted to write for teaching non-Vineyard people the 5 step model (this was harder than I thought it would be…I’m barely finished with the introduction and some of the theology), I started modeling this great idea I have for some furniture (it may even be patentable…also, Google Sketchup rocks for simple 3d modeling), and I felt generally more productive at work.
I’m going to continue to check my email w/ Thunderbird to avoid needless chatting online (looking at you Carlson) and the random internet surfing that comes from having a web browser open a lot.
Overall, I think I did realize I was somewhat medicating some of my feelings by fixating on reading more and more stuff on the internet (possibly addictively so). Not that I was reading bad stuff before (I found a bunch of helpful stuff from Vineyard people on a lot of good topics), but I was constantly filling any time or void w/ the internet. I hope to avoid that going forward, and may periodically fast from the internet again.