Iain Broome
You do other things when you’re not on the internet
So I’ve been working on my novel over the last month or so, which has meant that I’ve had less time for blogging, tweeting and other internet-based affairs. The first few days I felt an acute sense of hey, who cares? I can do what I want. Look at me. I’m free! Then a week went by and that freedom started to make me feel nauseous. I wanted to read articles and post links. I wanted to tweet more often and work on my lovely new Facebook page. But alas, I knew that I couldn’t.
And that’s when the guilt set in. It didn’t last long, maybe a couple of days, but I began to panic that I was letting people down by disappearing, all be it temporarily. It was silly, really. Unless you’re directly affecting yours or someone else’s ability to make a living, you should never feel guilty about not posting updates of any kind to the internet. But for a while, I admit that I did.
However, once I came to my senses, I realised that nothing had happened while I’d been away from the web. Actually, that’s not true. Lots had happened. But nothing bad in internet terms. I didn’t feel any less informed. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. Certainly nothing that I couldn’t hop back into as soon as I was ready.
Lots of good things happen when you use the internet every day. You meet and stay in touch with nice people, find interesting things to read, watch and listen to, and you often learn something new and exciting.
When you’re not on the internet, you do other things.