love is all around

Birthdays are a good opportunity for reflection - a natural time to look at from whence we came and where we are going.

I have done several purges in the last few years, letting go of what no longer serves me, so that there is room for what I truly want in my life.

This year I’ve decided to take a break from the Internet.

I love the Internet. In some ways I feel like it’s a part of me - maybe I’m not sure what I would be like without it. It’s been the source of nearly all my employment. My profession is not so much computer programming as Internet-building. The Internet has obviously delivered many positive things, and is constantly shaking things up, challenging old ways of thinking, and connecting people in new and interesting ways. However lately I’ve been noticing that I’ve allowed cyberspace to occupy too much of my space, and questioning the quality of my time spent there.

I’ve begun studying my habits (thoughts and actions), looking for ways to curb the stress-inducing ones, and promote the ones that are less demanding and more fulfilling. I’ve identified some Internet habits I have that I would like to break - here they are:

Addiction to news

This one manifests as hours and hours and hours spent with my feed reader, scouring the headlines for drips of new and cool in a sea of noise. This activity is driven partly by a natural and healthy curiosity but also an unhealthy desire for stimulation/distraction and fear of becoming obsolete or behind the times.

Addiction to downloading

This one is similar to my news addiction, but involves downloading music and movies. There is a ‘never enough’ feeling to this habit, as well as quantity over quality. What would I do without a hard drive full of music?

Addiction to social activity

My blog and Facebook page are like alternate ‘faces’ of mine - whose appearance I have a tendency to be overly concerned with. How many people read my blog? How many follow my feed? Do I post often enough? Do people like what I post? Was that last post too technical, non-technical, trivial, flaky? Maybe I need to work on my theme? Update my blog software? Argh, more comment spam!

Yikes… I worry way to much about a page of HTML.

Addiction to ‘Braincrack’

Braincrack (coined hilariously here) consists of compulsive thoughts about cool creative potential projects, which build up in your head, lingering there unfulfilled, only to be replaced by new thoughts of cool creative projects.

I am a victim of braincrack - at any given time I have 3 or 4 great web/tech/geek-related projects rolling around in my head that I never have time to work on. A fair number of my geek friends suffer from this as well… maybe it’s braincrack that makes you a geek. Anyway - it’s time to put the pipe down, and get off the braincrack.

The common theme here is wasted energy, wasted time, unnecessary worry and stress, and a turning away from the nuanced and infinite present moment.

These things have become so part of my reality that I’m not sure who I am without them. I want to find out.

I want more space in my life. More silence. Wider margins on the page.

This story by Thich Nhat Hanh has been popping up in my mind lately:

One day the Buddha was sitting in the wood with thirty or forty monks. They had an excellent lunch and they were enjoying the company of each other. There was a farmer passing by and the farmer was very unhappy. He asked the Buddha and the monks whether they had seen his cows passing by. The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.

The farmer said, “Monks, I’m so unhappy. I have twelve cows and I don’t know why they all ran away. I have also a few acres of a sesame seed plantation and the insects have eaten up everything. I suffer so much I think I am going to kill myself.

The Buddha said, “My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here. You might like to look for them in the other direction.”

So the farmer thanked him and ran away, and the Buddha turned to his monks and said, “My dear friends, you are the happiest people in the world. You don’t have any cows to lose. If you have too many cows to take care of, you will be very busy.

“That is why, in order to be happy, you have to learn the art of cow releasing. You release the cows one by one. In the beginning you thought that those cows were essential to your happiness, and you tried to get more and more cows. But now you realize that cows are not really conditions for your happiness; they constitute an obstacle for your happiness. That is why you are determined to release your cows.”

We have to ask what is really essential to our happiness. We believe that things are essential to our happiness, but we have to look again. Many of us have cows, many cows that prevent us from being happy. That is why we have to learn to release our cows. Also there are many cows inside, so many preoccupations! Many things to worry about, to be angry about, and there’s no space at all inside.

How can you be happy in such a state of being? That is why to release the cows around us and to let go of these preoccupations inside is a very essential condition for happiness. That is the space we are talking about when we practice. I am space; within and out. I feel free. Freedom is the real foundation of happiness.

It’s time to release some cows! Here’s what I have in mind for my Internet diet:

No more surfing, no more feed-reading

If there’s important information that I should know, I trust that the universe will find another way to give it to me. And if it doesn’t I guess that’s OK too… maybe it wasn’t that important?

No more downloading

I have a few podcasts that I’ll continue to watch - I find that these don’t have that random, always-searching-for-the-next-thing aspect. Maybe I’ll listen to the radio instead.

No more blogging

I’m closing down the blog - it’s been great, but it’s a big fat cow and needs to go. I’ll probably let go of the whole nearlyfree.org namespace entirely - time to move on.

Turn down the Facebook

I may still use it a bit for very specific things, like events, or for contacting people.

No more braincrack?

This one’s a little tougher, and is more psychological. The fact is, I have very little spare time these days, so the number of cool ideas I obsess over which actually manifest is close to zero. I’m also getting rid of all the domains I’ve registered and never done anything with, and never will. It’s kinda funny when you find yourself of thinking of projects to fit the domains you own. No more. Who knows what I’ll be able to do with all that freed up brain energy?

My goal is to be on this diet for a year, and re-evaluate next November 23rd.

Till then!

Peace.

Keith