I'm back...

I've been AWOL for several weeks, and it's taken another Essentials Course (on Songwriting to be exact) to get be back on track with writing here. That, and a friend asked why I hadn't been blogging which made me think that maybe I should be.

After reading back in February about a week-long internet fast that Jennifer @ Conversiondiary.com had done, I was finally pushed to do what I had suspected I needed to do for quite some time: spend less time online.

I took Lent as my starting point and committed to stay off of email and Facebook and severely limit internet access for 7 weeks, with breaks on Mondays and Thursdays to take care of online obligations. As Jennifer recommended, I set boundaries for those breaks: only after 9 p.m. when the kids were in bed and only for 30 minutes to 1 hour. I also allowed myself to briefly look up information during the day, but I tried to make a list of what I needed to do and then do it all at once during the "break days."

Let me just say...those weeks of Lent I found myself much more productive on the home front and much more in tune to the Lord without all of that distracting noise that the internet creates in my life. Instead of escaping to email/facebook/websurfing when things got intense around here, I would find a chore to do, read my Bible some, play guitar, worship, etc.

So, now I'm back online and struggling to find a reasonable rhythm for my internet activity while maintaining the perspective I gained during the fast. It's not easy, but I'm committed to figuring it out and breaking from the internet regularly.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll churn out some thoughts on songwriting and having a "blue sky mind."