How when I come back online after a few days away, it takes me under five minutes to start feeling completely awful again. Obviously I’m not suggesting that the Internet is inherently Bad For You or anything like that - it’s simply a medium, and like any medium it is what you make of it. But that’s exactly it: what I make of it at the moment isn’t always very good for me, and the stress and upset being online causes me often ends up outweighing the good. Lately I’ve been seriously considering cutting the amount of things I do online (and the time I spend doing them) by at least 50%. If that means dropping some projects, activities or social networks, so be it - I think it would do me a world of good. Of course, easier said than done, as old habits really do die hard. Anyway, this post is just me thinking out loud. Also, in a couple of hours it will make me look like a complete hypocrite, as I plan to spend the rest of the day going, “Paris! Sufjan! Shakespeare & Company! All the cool things I saw! Let me SHARE THEM WITH YOU, INTERNET”. 

(ETA: I wrote this before seeing the Newsweek piece and not in response to it. And I feel the need to clarify because I find these cyclical conversations more frustrating than not. This is me thinking about my life, rather than making assumptions about how others should spend their time.)