More insights from The Verge’s Paul Miller as his year without the internet continues.
The goal for me, in this year and beyond, is to do things consciously and purposefully — submitting my time to my personal goals and values, instead of the next clickiest link. Someone on Reddit warned me that I’d be bored if I left the internet, and they were right. I get bored all the time. In my internet days, I’d rarely be aware of boredom — I might chalk it up to my favorite websites being “boring,” or just satiate it with the endless spectacle of Tumblr or YouTube, and either way I’d keep clicking.
But now I sit on my couch, and the boredom weighs heavy, and then I decide what to do. In the meatspace, my next activity doesn’t come to me in the form of a push notification. I have to reach for a book, or my bike, or a guitar. I might sound like a college student from 1992, but I don’t mind.