Another Voice in the Cacophony

I’ve resolved to try an experiment. Starting today, I’m going 72 hours without using my personal Facebook or twitter account. Why this act of insanity? Because these two omnipresent social networking sites have taken over my life, and I want it back. I’m an addict. I confess.

There’s a lot that’s wonderful about both. I expend most of my energy on my job, and so the social connections I’ve forged on the two sites are my lifeline to the world. I love the people I’ve gotten to know, or to whom I’ve reconnected. I love reading all of the weird, cool, interesting things my friends have to say.

But.

There’s always a but.

I’ve come to realize that Facebook and twitter have become too much a part of my everyday existence. They’re too easy a way to while away the hours when I don’t want to face the work on my desk, or the dirty kitchen, or that novel that’s yet to be written.

And I think that conditioning myself to write in tiny boxes of 140 or 420 characters is damaging my ability to write. It becomes harder and harder for me to express a thought that isn’t a microburst. Since writing is my life’s blood, that’s a problem in need of correcting.

So I’m taking a break. Just a little one. Three days. Seventy-two hours, give or take. I expect it’ll be hard. Facebook and twitter have become habits in my life. I may click on my bookmarks without even realizing it because the pattern has become so second-nature. Most of my mornings start with gmail, Facebook and twitter before I’ve even had coffee. I expect there will be a lot of moments in the next three days when I want to click on those bookmarks, when my fingers itch to do it, but I have to stop myself.

Why three days? Random selection.

What’ll I do instead? Read books. Exercise. Clean my kitchen. Try to reconnect to my writing. Get some work done. And probably think a lot about what I’m missing on Facebook and twitter.

I have 366 unread books in my apartment, according to my profile on goodreads.com. That doesn’t include the 40-odd unread books on my Nook that I haven’t cataloged on Goodreads, nor the 17 books on my unfinished list — books I of course intend to finish … someday.

I have at least a dozen notebooks and journals of various sizes, shapes and volumes — all with a few pages of late-night, insomnia-driven scribbles, or perhaps fragments of short stories or ideas for novels jotted during a stolen minute in the midst of a meeting.

I own five exercise DVDs — three yoga, one pilates and one cardio salsa — and three sports- or fitness-related Xbox Kinect games, as well as a yoga mat, exercise mat, a couple of hand weights, elastic bands, an inflatable exercise ball, a book on using an inflatable exercise ball, and books on pilates and strength training for women.

If good intentions alone actually accomplished anything, I’d be a svelte, healthy, well-read, profoundly intellectual, critically-acclaimed, world-famous writer and all-around bad-ass adventurer who speaks five languages and has left no corner of the earth unexplored or unphotographed.

But everyone knows what they say about good intentions.

So instead, I live the life of a mere mortal, with only so many hours in the day and more demands and desires than time.

I’m reading those books at a pace of 30 a year, in a good year.

I think a lot about exercising, but don’t actually get much of it done.

Traveling? Only in my dreams, or occasionally in my kitchen when I try a new Indian or Mediterranean recipe. My landscape photography mostly has been limited to the local riverfront parks.

And then there’s writing, the thing about which I am supposed to be most passionate, which is supposed to leave me feeling most fulfilled, and I can barely seem to put fingertip to keyboard outside of my day job as a journalist.

I’m left wondering, “What am I doing?” and “Is the life I lead enough?” The answer to the latter question almost invariably is … “No.” It’s always been “no” for as long as I can remember, except for an interlude of a few years after I took a leap of faith, drove across country, and started a new life and a new career in journalism in late 2004. But even that provided only a fleeting happiness and sense of purpose. There’s something eternally restless and dissatisfied inside of me, and I keep thinking I could be happy, or at least happier, if only I could find more time to write, to read, to swim laps at the pool, or to finally try out that zumba program I bought for my Xbox.

But is it really a matter of finding time? Perhaps our natural tendency as humans is toward complacency and acceptance of where we are in life regardless of whether it’s a place that’s fulfilling or satisfying. We fall so easily and comfortably into ruts. We convince ourselves we’re too old for change, or that change is too hard or too costly, that we have responsibilities and obligations we just can’t shirk. But then I think about how I did it once. I changed. I was happy. Can I do that again? Change doesn’t have to be big and sweeping. It doesn’t have to be about driving across country. Maybe it’s as simple as looking at the world from an angle just different enough that it catches the light in a new way and regains its luster.

Maybe it starts with a little bit of zumba.