Gadgetory

ten nine eight seven six five four three two one all is leaving the internet for a you've been on the internet for a super long time here most of your adult life right and you want to write you want to write about like what is life is life without you it's something that I want to do for the personal exploration of how it will help me deal with my productivity my creativity and figuring out how the Internet's impacting me just stop the smell of flowers I mean really just use the opportunity of this year take hold of the basic and enjoys of what I just feel overwhelmed because I you know I don't seem to be in sync with human race you know like I it's a it's there's deeper deeper reasons for most of my problems that really didn't have a lot to do with the internet they just manifest differently on and offline when I was a freshman in the high school he was a senior in high school we were both did football so we don't really see each other much but then he would he and his buddy would drive me home after practice I got to ride in the back of his buddy's truck it's my phone that's so cool knowing two seniors Zach was just like the perfect person at all times and he got in the Air Force Academy then he flew 852 s and it has been at the academy running the jump team and now he's going to Qatar my brother and I don't talk on the phone very well it was always nice to be able to Skype with his kids and I couldn't do that this year so being with them in person I got to connect with him in a way that was just impossible this year without the internet when I got the color of Springs and my flight was delayed and it seemed like a big hassle and he's got one day left for this family and I felt like I was crashing the party you know this is like a really emotional difficult goodbye for all of them and like what was I doing there but once I was there I felt like I really belong there so you've got a computer right so this is your iMac the internet connects your computer to other computers I disconnected I don't have the internet for a whole year spit without the internets well I can't Skype with you because I can't connect you didn't want to do it yeah I wanted to take a break cuz you don't like it I didn't like it sometimes I think the Internet's really good but sometimes I get a little tired of it I used too much internet I see I didn't spend time with real people but now at the end of this month I'm gonna be back on the internet and then I can Skype with you the true and it's a family I felt this year I kind of missed a lot of opportunities to leave the house and leave New York I want to do something really tangible before I came back to the internet and you write novels about road trips you make Road Trip movies but sitting in your apartment all day is not really that exciting to see yeah so the general plan is not to have too much of a plan like I don't want to be swept along by an interstate and told to you by Google Maps that I want to see if I can see the beautiful midsection of America so I left the internet this year and I do think it was an indictment or or Lisa a chance to judge how valuable the Internet is to me I was pretty surprised to see that in a lot of ways it's non-vital at least the way I was using it I thought when I first left the internet that he'd be a lot of like getting used to using the library in the post office and like really practical stuff but I just didn't really do much of that I'm pretty good at getting around New York if I need to get around somewhere else I'd you know like buy paper math I just did less you know I didn't stress about the things I kind of couldn't do I don't miss the internet I don't dream about it I don't yearn for it you know every once a while somebody's like oh there's this really funny thing a lot happening on Twitter but I can't tell you you know but I don't I don't care it you know my biggest fear though is that at the end of the year I don't want to really go back to the internet for Laura even though it's so awesome it's such a cool thing I just I like myself a lot better not on the internet so I feel like doing a year of this is going to be like a piece of cake this is just this is basically really easy right now they're like there's tiny minor inconveniences in exchange for having a blast a total complete blast for beautiful Holly Colorado second 945 tour real slow to start but it's alright and we're really close to Kansas you're gonna try to get all the way through Kansas today we're kind of along the Santa Fe Trail which you way it's kind of like the Oregon Trail of the Santa Fe I feel like we haven't really scratched the surface with who is Paul Miller but that's what Kansas is for cuz Kansas can be really boring yep down with the Internet lean our goat home got nothing to do got no internet to call me or something where's Frigg field Missouri at Grace Chapel this is where my parents went when I was born I never planned to reconnect with my childhood or anything but I did want to know what what I would look like without the internet because the last time I knew myself without the internet was when I was about 12 I hope I can capture a little bit of that stupid imagination that kid had you know before I had the internet I used my computer to write a allegorical fiction where me and my siblings rooms were different kingdoms and then I was also making stop-motion animation short films after I got the internet I used aim and did message boards and then eventually built at Lindsay Lohan fancy there are two eras you know and so I'm kind of getting a look at the old air before I go back to you know the new Eric the idea really sprung up just from a concept I wanted to I never went to school and so I wanted to like study like you know great books so I can be more educated and being a better writer I was like well I spend all my time using the internet so if I didn't use the internet I would have unlimited free time I told Josh told Josh I was gonna quit that was that's how I phrase I didn't say like hey I'm gonna do this crazy experiment like I was quitting the birds I think I was really burned out i-i've been doing tech writing for seven years at that point in about seven years I felt like a big treadmill effect because you know my email just never ends the work chatroom I'm always busy there's always something to do there's always new more and more and more news to cover you know I was trying to like transition over a future writing and like fit up bigger features but I was kind of bad at it I think a lot of that exhaustion made it feel like it was imperative instead of it just being a cool fun idea it felt like my only hope at sanity and kind of get off the treadmill can I get four of those the light green enjoys I really do kind of addicted their addicting I'm addicted I left the internet because it seemed like the only choice at the time did it work it didn't really know it didn't really work there's been some awesome things from this year there's been some negative things from this year but as far as like my thesis sitting out it's like you know well I've got a year you could do all these awesome stuff I didn't do you know half of it I didn't play a lot of video games and just a cat I didn't quite chunky looks like I expected myself to and I and I still feel overwhelmed and it is a different kind of overwhelmed it's just more existential and it has less concrete factors this is where I spent most of the last year of my life I typically have my feet up right here I suppose I have an Xbox controller on my lap and and then there's like an e-cigarette like so where the fold of clothing I I still haven't finished the first draft of my novel that I've been working out for five years and I you know I don't I haven't written this book about leaving the internet yet and I don't know if I don't know how I don't know if I can I think I hope I can't but I just you know I've got no evidence yet that I will be able to write a whole book and this might sound like a downer but I'm kind of a depressive and for me that means just sometimes it kind of hurts to be a lot like I just just you know it sucks that that you got to kind of do each day and keep doing the next day and it just moments hurts sequentially and when I'm embarking on stimulation and I can always you know feel fill that need every time you know I feel like I feel like I'm getting bored and I'm not happy and so I can go and do something really quickly to kind of fill that need I think I can confuse the issue and confuse the subject and kind of not quite understand the way I was feeling was which was deeper than just I'm bored right now it had something to do this I like I'm deeply distressed that life goes on I don't know no I said and and so some of the for the loneliness and boredom that came from leaving the internet was really instructional because it just let me know that you know my problems were much more deep internal than external oh man justin map boy is a writer at polygon which is the video game sister site of the verge I'm just kind of a total fanboy of just a macro I find him incredibly incredibly hilarious and he also just seems how the life kind of figured out I want to know his secret are you worried that when you get back on the internet that you like do you think you made like a lasting change in your consumption like W change your relationship with it or is it are you worried that it'll be like oh I miss all of it right now I'm like I might just have zero defenses if I can alien invades planet Earth and they're destroying everything but they don't have any immune right right so to respond to our diseases so you're saying you're telling me that like I know this Nigerian prince seems super legit because I sent him seven thousand dollars that I could be really super rich so I don't know I'm gonna give it a shot see now I wanted to ask I just feel like you've kind of got it you've got it together okay I've gotta go it out I'm walking on life advice and married mmm-hmm I would love to be married you know I cannot help you you live in a beautiful neighborhood and I can't really expect to ever do this well um as far as your your wife giving you advice I think I started having more success when I stopped feeling like there was a narrative to my life I think once you let go that idea then first of you stop seeing yourself as like the most important thing in your narrative you know you see yourself as more of a component I don't have there's no arc to my story there's no like climax or anticlimax ordaining wah so you trying to find where things connected or like what made sense in my arc you didn't really make a lot of sense and once I let go of that because that was a big thing for me in high school in college I like once I let go that I think I I started having or success or became happier I've always felt a lot of pressure to have done something like 27 but like once I'm through 27 like I'm almost 30 and then like I'm totally single and still can't write longer than a thousand words at this point the only thing that's left for me is being novels because you can you can start relatively late it's terrible but I think of Dylan the beals like what I'm thinking about muse and that it's too late to really do something great and special on music because I couldn't be dealing the Beatle I tried to deprogram myself from thinking about the art and made more decisions not like in the moment just but juice but what I really want to be doing right now what what should I really be doing right now and do that thing instead of thinking about the art I want this next year to be about other people than then just Paul Miller there's only so much navel-gazing that one guy can do and and you know there's people in the world with real problems other than that they use reddit too much so I'm going to go back to real life and stop you know fooling around so much I've no regrets what a good year this is a really cool thing that I got to do I'm really lucky to work for a site like this that wanted to find out what would happen if I left the Internet I think now I know about as much as I'll ever know about offline Paul what what what about me because I used the Internet what about me because I'm Paul Miller and I was born in Springfield Missouri to Dennis and Christine Miller and then I grew up being a cowboy and playing a roller hockey and now I'm a tech writer I'm Paul Miller and I just spent the year without the internet can you tell you