The Weight of Words

I’m not saying this is the last Lifehacker article I’ll ever read, but I find it funny that it’s the last article I read before removing Lifehacker from my blog reader. (The article is about clutter, and for me, Lifehacker in my blog reader has become clutter.) It’s not that I have anything against Lifehacker, but unless you keep up with it throughout the day at work (you know, when you should be working), it becomes a cluttered pile of bits at the end of the day. (And the weeks I don’t look at my blog reader? It becomes a mountain that ends up deleted unread!)

They need a life hack for keeping up with all the life hacks!

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Cutting it Down

As much as I once loved BoingBoing, that went away from my blog reader quite some time ago–again, just too much information coming in throughout the day. The effort to keep up was simply not worth it. As much as I hate saying it, as the Nerdist has grown, it’s something I’m considering removing from my blog reader as well. This doesn’t mean I never look at BoingBoing and that I’ll never go to Lifehacker’s site, but the days of keeping up with frequently updated blogs is over. In an effort to keep up with all that content, I sometimes miss or don’t spend as much time focusing on the content that matters most to me.

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Reducing the Words in My Life (To Make More Words in My Life)

In addition to reducing the amount of words that pile up in my blog reader each day, I’ve also refined my social media groups so I see less. One day, while wading through my social media feeds, I realized that I was growing tired of even political causes and other things I like and believe in because of the constant pile of same/similar posts I see all day. Add to that people sharing inspirational sayings, the same video 25 times, and not really discussing what they are up to…and it became time I no longer enjoyed.

It was time I could have been focusing on the posts that matter most to me and my own writing. So all that got cut, too…and with it has come a better focus on people who actually discuss things. Also, even more time for writing!

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Smaller is Better (For Me, at Least)

It’s not that I don’t go to certain people’s pages and catch up, but the ranters, crusaders, and repeaters are no longer in my main feeds and circles. Now, what is presented to me in my blog reader and social media feeds are people and things that tend to be more positive and focused on what interests me most. The anger and despair are gone. And because of these reductions, I’m writing even more words.

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All the Things

I previously wrote about trying to keep up with or find all the things out there–and what a daunting [even impossible] task it is. I’ve taken social media breaks before and devoted long weekends to not looking at anything online. It’s not that “online” is the problem…it’s how I use it at times. Same thing with video games, television, and even exercise–it can become the thing, instead of just a thing.

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Missing Out?

I know I “miss out” on things I find interesting by stepping back and reducing the distractions in my life. (BoingBoing posts cool stuff all day, but rarely do they post something that actually makes my life better in some way.)

It’s not that these things prevent me from writing…I tend to write first thing in the morning, before looking at anything online. But all the things out there are like caffeine seeking out receptors in my brain and filling the tiny voids. I like blogs and social media and online articles, but they can become words that simply fill receptors in my brain and leave me with a false sense of something going on up there.

I like a cup of coffee or two each day, but more than that and I feel like crap. My brain and body becomes too amped to write to the best of my abilities. Online things are not much different–at some point, it’s just filling time and space in my head, when I can be doing other things.

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A Cup or Two, a Blog or Three…

Just like a good cup or two of coffee each day, I enjoy a handful of blogs and social media feeds. Too much, though, and I rob my brain of the time it needs to sit there doing nothing so it’s ready for the times I call on it to write the words that matter the most to me.

Scribo ergo sum; caveat Lector…