After this post, I am going to try and go off the grid, as it were, for the duration of the Tea Debacle, for reasons which I’ll explain briefly.
The nice thing about being banned off AW — and the reason that I insist on being banned and not merely logging out, or saying “Yell at me if you see me logged in!” — is that I am given no reason at all to visit, and so I stay away. I do other things. I don’t think about it. The nice thing about that is, it gives me distance and perspective, two things I vitally need. I don’t have middle gears. I am either away from AW (and then, gently back with perspective), or I am completely embroiled in the place and, when I’m not careful or I’m tired, it swallows my day.
So: Being away will give me perspective. I am hoping that, falling off the grid will do somewhat of the same for the internet. To my dissatisfaction, I have noted that too much of my time has shifted to pottering around people’s blogs and reading fascinating interviews with people, like the Gene Wolfe interviews I’ve been posting. I do that a lot, and while it’s not a bad thing — it counts, for me, as learning — it still isn’t getting words on paper. (Here’s a John Irving interview.)
So, I’m going to vacate the blogosphere, as best as I can manage it. I can’t be banned off that, so it’ll be up to that tricky willpower thing.
Continue to please get your numbers to me on Sunday evenings, I’ll still receive them and upload charts. Any problems, e-mail me. I cannot divest myself of e-mail, it is too much of a tie to too many people which I need to stay in semi-regular contact with. Even so, I’ll try to cut down.
