I'm participating in Reverb10, a daily writing prompt throughout the month of December related to reflecting on the previous year and planning for the next. You can read more about why I'm doing it here.


December 2nd Prompt - Writing 

Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it? 

I spend way to much time getting distracted by the noise of the Internet: Facebook, Twitter, email, my RSS feeder. Recently I wrote about some measures I'm taking to deal with some of these distractions and it's going alright - though I still check the RSS way too often.

It's challenging to eliminate these distractions altogether because I work in the web space and because I'm location independent and the web is also where I do most of my networking and where I keep in touch with loved ones. But I can do a better job of managing the amount of time I'm spending there so that it's less of a compulsion.

On December 10th Dan and I are heading into South East Asia for three and a half months - starting with Vientiane, Laos, then Hanoi, Vietnam and then Chiang Mai and other parts of Thailand. Although I need a certain amount of access to the Internet to work, I am genuinely hoping to try and schedule one or two days a week where it's mostly inaccessible to me so that I can try to find my way into a deeper practice of writing and thinking. We are also looking at renting some remote accommodations, which I'm hoping to be able to use as a retreat of sorts.

Image by me, Imperial Palace Grounds, Tokyo, Japan