I’m in a bit of a Catch-22. I’ve been trying to spend less time online – especially on IM – at home, as I hate coming home after staring at a computer for 8 hours and then staring at the computer for a few more hours for absolutely no good reason. I hated it when I had to do it for school, but at least then there was a good reason for doing so.
The flip side of this is that I have also been trying to minimize my social chatting when I’m at work, so if I’m not on IM at work and I’m not on IM at home, I don’t get to talk to many people that I would otherwise chat with here and/or there.
The not-totally-explicit part of all of this is that I hate talking on the phone, I’ve proved to be a poor email correspondent if the message requires more than five minutes’ response time, and very few of my friends are letter writers.
All of this goes to the point of that while I really want to follow Leslie’s example, I’m fighting a losing battle, and am doing my best instead to broadcast my thoughts and feelings instead of keeping in touch. I’m sorry. I’m a bad correspondent. Please keep me on my toes.
Maybe do a one week Internet fast every month and just let people know you’ll be incommunicado for that period of time?
I’m planning to do that for a couple of weeks at the end of this month, just to keep myself from spending my whole break tethered to my computer.
I hate and fear the phone too, so I know what you mean about online communication being easier.