Looking for an exit ramp

A few weeks ago, my son told me that he’s adopted a new morning routine, one that involves putting pen to paper rather than booting up his laptop. Since he’s on the south side of age 30 (an arbitrary demarcation of trustworthiness), I admit that I immediately snapped to attention.

He told me that his rationale for writing, sans computer, was his recognition that technology was negatively impacting his productivity as a writer. He reasoned that since he awoke at 4:30 am (a full 2 ½ hours prior to his work departure), this was early enough an hour to be moving his writing forward, yet he was keenly aware that time was being wasted. Astutely, he saw that it was technology’s lure via the web—its information (neither good, nor bad) preening, beckoning him in the dark, a mouse click, or a few key strokes away, all he had to do was depart from his writing task at hand and it could be his—was a supreme waster of his time to write.

When he told me this, something resonated with me. Eureka!! My own morning writing routine, one that I’ve maintained for more than five years, had been co-opted by web surfing for information. Given that I have an hour for writing pursuits in the morning before I have to depart for the office, I had begun filling it with peeks at box scores via MLB.com, reading a couple of well-written literary blogs, and before I knew it, my hour for writing had been reduced to 15 minutes, or less. When I did the quick calculation, it was apparent that I was pissing away writing time to the tune of 2-3 hours per week, and a more significant portion of monthly writing time. Since I require a day job to stay ensconced in necessary materials (i.e. food and shelter), I recognized something had to go if I have any aspirations of continuing to produce a book every year, or two.

Returning to methods that have served mankind well pre-internet is no earth-shattering revelation. Much like television, the digital elements of the internet lure you in, casting a stupor, dulling your senses and more often than not, dispatch the writing muse off to visit some other more worthy soul.

Writers and thinkers more astute than me have recognized technology’s deadening qualities, recognizing it as a killer of creativity. Names like Wendell Berry, Neil Postman and Jacques Ellul have all written eloquently and voluminously on the topic. No less an “authority” than Michael Lewis weighed in on the subject way back in 2001 with his book, Next: The Future Just Happened, in which he closes the book with a chapter titled, “The Unabomber Had A Point.”

Rather than heed these warnings, and the cautionary caveats of other like-minded people, lazy non-intellectuals immediately get their hackles up when their beloved technology is challenged. Interestingly, they don’t even know why they’re so put out when technology and the internet come under attack, just that it holds a pseudo-religious sway over their undernourished worldviews.

Men and women that have long ago gone soft mentally, forsaking the heavy lifting of the mind, don’t bat an eye in lobbing ad hominem attacks at men (and women) who put forth strong intellectual arguments against a blind embrace of technology.

While I wouldn’t put my son in the same league with these intellectual giants, at the same time, he’s no lightweight when it comes to considering life’s thorny questions. Likewise, he’s far from being a neo-Luddite, a common refrain hurled at thinkers like Postman, and in particular, Berry. Without an axe to grind, Mark recognizes that an aspiring writer has regular demands made upon his time from living life, and that there are a finite number of hours available each day, period. For him, it’s all about the productivity factor.

On the other hand, for the past decade, or longer, I’ve listened to all the claims made about technology, and in particular, the information super highway. All of these promises and purported benefits have begun to ring hollow.

When I first hung a right and took the onramp and merged amidst the world wide web, it was akin to standing on a vast ridge, overlooking a wide-open frontier, as far as my eye (and imagination) could see. The vista seemed fraught with positives and great promise. Limitless access to information seemed too good to be true (remember the adage, “if it seems too good to be true…).

Since I’ve always been someone that was (and remains) hungry to learn and continue to push back against my own intellectual limits, the internet (interwebs?) seemed like a perfect new development. Instead, 10 years on, I’m now attuned to my own laziness, or maybe, an ease with taking liberties with shortcuts. All of this crept in, like a thief in the night, with my laziness masquerading as intellectual curiosity.

So, how do you combat it, short of canceling cable and internet, or going off the grid?

For me, I’ve tried to remember what life was like before I had the internet at my fingertips. How did I gather information? Print was the primary method; books, newspapers, and other publications. Obviously, the local library was a resource.

I’m not going to get all pious (and hypocritical) on my readers and tell you that I no longer use technology because you know how untruthful that would be, given that I’m still blogging an all.

What I am doing this summer, however, is decreasing my time mindlessly surfing for information. I’ve cut down on my participation with social media. I’m reading books, including this one. I’m also back to listening to baseball via the radio mainly, which allows me to read or write, and not be a slave to the constant flux of digital images in the evening.

I'll continue to post to my blog (s), but probably not daily. When I have something to share that has involved some thought and effort at setting it down first, on pen and paper, then I'll labor a bit and form it into something semi-intelligent, and then post it. I'm learning that it's is better to ruminate first, rather than immediately regurgitate. These posts will be a bit longer, and most likely an essay, or something resembling one.

Where will all of this take me? I’m not sure, but eventually, I hope that my increased writing productivity means that another book will materialize in the future.

Downplaying digital

Unfortunately, the demands of work last week cut into my ability to spend the requisite time I've been devoting to reading, and researching my History Maker Monday topics the past several weeks. 65-hour work weeks, plus the pull of tax season will probably prevent me once more from getting up a new HMM post this week.

While I regret not having the time to pull together the kind of research I truly enjoy doing, this time away from blogging has also allowed me to ruminate on just how beneficial my recent spate of postings really are to my longterm goals of writing, particularly the tension I'm feeling to re-engage with a new cycle of reasearch devoted to getting another book project off the ground.

While I'm not contemplating pulling the plug on blogging, I'm certainly experiencing doubts about the veracity of the hype surrounding social networking, recognizing that it can be a great waste of time, and a killer of the creative spark.

Maybe I'm just feeling burnt from work, and my tolerance for winter has reached its apex, but the few times I've done my blog crawl this week, and checked my Twitter account, have failed to elicit much in the way of enthusiasm.

My limited downtime each evening has found me sitting in my easy chair, television dark, book in hand, nursing a beer.