Today Is Day Three of the Rest of Your Night

I've sworn off internetting for the entire year. Technically internetting isn't a proper word because it's not in The Dictionary.com. Irregardless, it's clearly a word, as evidenced by the fact you already have a pretty good idea what it means without my having to explain it.

I'm obviously still using the internet but trying to do so more "mindfully." I'm not participating on social media (aside from some prerequisite career-related activities). Nor am I doomscrolling on sites like Reddit, Google News, Yahoo News, Hacker News, News News, or Etcetera Etcetera News. I'm not going to spend hours at a time watching trucks smash into this clearly labeled bridge or laughing at old Vines on YouTube. (I miss Vine so much!) I'm still keeping the YouTube Premium subscription, but I'm being far more particular about my media consumption across the board.

My main objective is to escape the hive-mind's din, which will, hopefully, reduce stress to some significant degree. None of you are as bad as all of you, and all of you together are something else. A disciplined approach to using the internet will also free up more time for hobbies, exercise, professional development, reading books, and other constructive activities. That's the theory, anyway. In practice, I've mostly been alternating between climbing the walls and dozing off at strange times. I'm not going to argue internetting is addictive in the same way drugs can be, but cutting back does feel very much like quitting smoking felt those many years ago (albeit orders of magnitude less severe).