Update on Turn It Off Day

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Originally published on 26 March 2007.

I have often worried that I am addicted to the computer, especially on those nights when I sit down to do one thing and end up surfacing hours later to realize I have wasted a large chunk of time doing nothing important, while not tackling the things I needed to get done.

When I read the article about Shutdown Day (which I talked about in my article National Shutdown Day, I thought it would be a good way to challenge myself. I had instituted a no-computer rule on Sundays for a while, but I had gotten away from that. Was this something I could do?

The answer is yes. I successfully did not use my computer on Saturday, March 24. The funny thing was that I was aware at how much I used it to fill empty time. I spent the daylight hours getting the gardens ready for spring, and coming in, I would probably have spent most of the evening on the computer. After wandering around restlessly for a half hour, too tired to tackle my non-fiction reading, and unwilling to turn on the TV, I found that my partner and I were able to sit down and talk. It was a good thing to do, and not something we do often enough, sadly.

What this has indicated to me is that I need to get back into doing the Sunday computer free days, and really make the most of the time away from the ‘net.