Rerouting

In July, I went to Paris.  Physically and mentally.  And with my girlfriend.  Amazing Paris comic journal courtesy of Lucy Knisley.

Lengthy vacations allow us to pull up the anchor and drift for a bit.  The difference between today’s Johnny and June 2009 Johnny is probably greater than the difference between June 2009 Johnny and the Johnny of one year prior, and not just in fromage content.

As such, New Johnny’s in charge now, and he’s plotted a new course for the ship.

For starters, I’m cleaning house.  Earlier tonight, I dropped a load of clothes and rarely-used household items at a local non-profit resale shop that funds LGBT services.  (If anyone needs a white noise machine or a shaving cream warmer, hit up the Brown Elephant on Halsted.)  More of my apartment detritus is going up on eBay later this week.  A friend is stopping by tomorrow to pick up half a dozen dress shirts that have been too big for my scrawny frame since the first day I bought them; their departure is long overdue.

I’ve also begun making changes in my computer use.  Patton Oswalt said in his recent AV Club interview, “You can replace the internet with five really smart friends,” and wow, there are a lot of things I like about that brief quote.  As a technophile, mitigating my habitual and at times junkie-like interaction with personal technology is a difficult and evolving process, but I’ve made a few inroads.  One big help: Leechblock, a Firefox extension that lets you lock yourself out of websites you choose, during time frames you choose.  I’ve configured it to keep me away from Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and several other sites after 9 PM.  It also locks me out of certain sites after a time limit of my choosing; this keeps me from spending all day on 4chan or some other such internet sinkhole.  Per Aldous Huxley via Neil Postman, I’ve ruined many hours on the internet, and I’d really, really like that to stop.

This post will have to end here.  I’m approaching the dangerously recursive territory of losing sleep to spend time on the computer writing a blog about how I should spend less time on the computer.