Giving Up The Internet*

The Internet is a great thing.  You can pay your bills, rent movies, communicate quickly, meet people from around the world, research and buy products, keep up with your friends, etc.  Also, if you’re anything like me, you can find yourself wasting 90% of your free time there, aimlessly browsing the news, gossip, reading about new and upcoming products, only later to find out that you no longer have enough time to do what you were planning to do.  So often I turn on my laptop, planning on playing a huge portion of some game I bought years ago, or intending to quickly check my email and update Quicken, then maybe get some exercise or do something otherwise constructive.  Before I know it, it’s three or four hours later (I’m not exaggerating), and all my free time is gone.

Lent is a time when Catholics (such as myself), give up something that we love (among other fasting criteria) for 40 days, from Ash Wednesday (today) until Easter Sunday, emulating the 40 days of fasting that Jesus spent in the desert shortly before Palm Sunday and The Last Supper.  When I was a kid, we often had to give up candy, television, or computer games.  In more recent years, if I’ve even attempted to give up anything, it’s usually been along the lines of a second New Year’s resolution, trying to eat better or exercise more, trying to improve myself rather than simply give something up.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, except that this usually worked about as well as most New Year’s resolutions, because it was hoped that they would stick for the long term.

This year, in an attempt to make Lent feel more significant, as it did when I was a kid, I had the notion to give up The Internet*.  I have to put an asterisk there, and here’s why:  Unfortunately, it’s not really possible for me to live without the Internet completely.  I need it to pay my bills, read important memos for work, videoconference with my family, check the weather, etc.  There are also things I do on the Internet that I deem constructive, like updating this blog, since it serves as my oft-neglected journal.

*What I’m specifically giving up is wasting time surfing the net, which is what I spend most of my time on here doing.  Until Easter, I will be giving up Facebook, YouTube, Google, Amazon (and all other shopping sites), Gamespot, news sites, message boards, chat programs, and all those other sites where I spend countless hours reading, scrolling, clicking, repeating.  I will still check email, weather, work-required things, videoconference with my family, pay bills, blog, patch games if necessary, and may make some premeditated purchases (where I don’t read reviews for hours before buying).  In a sense, I’m not giving up the total convenience of the Internet, just the time wasting parts.  It may seem kind of pansy (like not eating meat on Fridays only to go to a fish fry, which does not count somehow), but the goal here is to eliminate an unproductive habit.

Will this make me any closer to God?  It might actually.  I won’t go so far as to say that I’ll now spend my former-web-surfing time on my knees saying the Rosary, but when my laptop comes on and my mouse seems to move automatically to that Firefox shortcut, and a blank page opens up instead of my customized Google homepage with all my favorite sites fed straight into it, I will hopefully stop and think that what I am doing is for God (however insignificant it might seem), just as it did when I was a kid and wanted to turn on the TV or grab a snack.  I might even get some exercise in my new found free time (that’d be a stretch still).

The Sunday Rule

There is a debate among Catholics that I know, that on Sundays you are allowed to basically take a day off from what you’re giving up, since Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest.  I generally follow this “rule” (most Catholics are good at following the easy rules), but I agree that it doesn’t always fit.  For example, if you’ve given up shopping or going to the movies for Lent, then Sunday just becomes “shopping day” or “movie day.”  In this case, however, I think I’m going to allow up to one hour of web surfing for myself on Sundays (if I can find an hour; Sundays are pretty busy), but I haven’t decided for sure yet.

Well, reading all this, for some reason it doesn’t sound like much, but it will be more than I’ve given up in a long time, and I bet it will be harder than it sounds.  Here goes, wish me luck . . . .