Write you are…

Before I go mad, that is. I was already thinking about this when I read these pieces by Rachel Cooke and Mark Hooper. I’m taking May off. No work. No writing. No internet. No computer, even.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the web and a lot of my work is for online these days. But I let it seep into my precious spare time, far too much. (You may think freelancers have lots of spare time. But nobody pays for it. So if anything, I’m very bad at taking time off.) I don’t need to be online so much.

I wouldn’t want to ditch mobile internet, mainly because I need to be able to pick up emails from editors. Being able to do that on my phone frees me to leave the house without carting a laptop around, so I can answer urgent questions, pick up commissions etc. Plus I can surf the net on long train journeys, and access it at my parents’ (internet-less) house. But do I really need to check email and Twitter during a ten-minute train journey?

My online/offline balance is… well, it’s not balanced. You’d expect a freelancer to be a bit glued to their email, but I really need to take a step back. Some would say: just use the net less, then. Which would be unhelpful and pointless. Being a freelance journalist would be impossible without email and the web, even if I didn’t build some of my own web features (I need written confirmation of commissions and fees, for starters).

What I’m trying to do is break my behaviour patterns and learn better ones. First off, I’ve been decluttering. NewsFox has really helped with this. I no longer check umpteen feeds just-in-case-something-new-appeared as I can trust it’s being found, will be kept until I read it and will then auto-delete. I know RSS readers are hardly revelatory but it has taken me ages to find one I like or to realise how much time it could save me. And I’ve set it to only refresh itself once every two hours so it’s not a constant distraction.

I have also spring-cleaned my email (down from using 15% of my Gmail storage to 4%), Facebook messages, Facebook friends, Facebook application permissions, tweets, people I follow on Twitter, internet bookmarks, the documents on my PC… the list goes on. If I deleted anything important I will just have to ask someone. I’ve stopped running my inbox in the background all the time, too. Instead of just deleting emails I don’t want, I’ve been unsubscribing from all the newsletters I don’t read or want, which is about 99% of them, and emailing PRs to ask them to remove me from irrelevant mailing lists.

And in May, I’m switching off. I’m going to remove my mobile internet settings and get my boyfriend to hide my laptop. And then I’m going to have a proper, lovely, blissful break and remember what it’s like not to be switched on all the time. I did think about letting myself use iTunes or the Picturehouse website or my internet banking or… but I think it has to be all or nothing. I don’t need to do my banking online, I can go to a bank or just phone them up. I can phone the cinema, or look in the leaflet they send me every month.If I “just look at one thing” it will be the beginning of the end.