The overconsumption of digital text

I recently started having free weekends, and it feels great! For anyone who has been balancing a job, university and a start-up, having finally nothing to do is an achievement. Of course, the word nothing is relative, as there is always more time and effort you can invest in any of these tasks, but it is about being able to put everything on hold and just be.

And so I was free, independent and… had nothing to do. With all this free time, I decided to tackle my online reading which has been piling up in my computer since the beginning of the year. I went through all my Monocle Weekend newsletters and carefully read most of the information. I clicked on the different links saved in my reading list, predominantly from The Good Trade, and decided to tackle the red notifications in my Reminders. Simply put, I read a lot.

Having gone through about 100 short articles and maybe 20 long ones maybe made me think. Why would I write yet another piece of writing? Don’t get me wrong, I love writing, but having gone through dozens of blog posts, I could hardly remember what half of them talked about.

In addition to my terrible memory, I now also spend most of my time at work writing - emails, notes, reports, … you name it, I wrote it. But I have no more time or energy for my own blog posts. Even worse, I developed a terrible tension in my wrist and now every scroll results in pain.

I love writing, but having gone through dozens of blog posts, I could hardly remember what half of them talked about.

And so, now I reached the stage when I am no longer convinced whether and why I want to write. I read so much that I feel like the Internet is already overwhelmed with information and I am not certain I want to support this overpopulation of content. Just like with overconsumption of clothing, can we also consume too much written text? I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that I want my life to be sustainable and enjoyable. And by forcing myself to write a regular online contribution every week, I will eventually lose the joy that writing gives me. Furthermore, I will overwhelm my readers who surely have other reading suggestions on their list with something that is not useful for them. And so, I decide to write about only what makes me happy. My blog is a form of a digital, self-reflective diary which I can always go back to and remember the good moments of my life. And who knows, maybe once I will feel like sharing my experience with the digital community every day, but until then, I am happy to write whenever I feel like it and when the pain in my wrist passes away.

Thank you for reading and investing your time into my digital diary. Hope you will remember it.

Image credit: Christopher Gower