Why It’s Good to Unplug Sometimes

As a writer, I make one dangerous assumption before I put my feet on the floor every morning – that I’m like just about everybody else in the world. I’m amazing, I’m sensational, I’m spectacular and everything that happens to me is likewise amazing, sensational and spectacular!

Following from that, and this is crucial, it is very important for me that you know how amazing, sensational and spectacular I am. My Facebook status is witty, prompting scads of people to “like this”; my incessant tweets reveal how truly stunning my every move is (i.e. “Deciding to wear pants”); I take really artsy and poetic pictures to post on Tumblr; I found a super site before you did and posted it to my delicious; I’m listening to some amazing bands at last.fm. You get the idea.

The only catch – the only blip in my otherwise super amazing colossal life – is that you (YOU) might miss part of it.  Never fear!  My brontosaur sized ego can keep chewing the leafy greens in piece because now – ah! – there are programs and websites, variations of RSS and Atom syndications, that let you keep up with every mundane aspect of my life!

That’s right –our every move and action, our every thought, whim and impulse can now be beamed directly to a central location directly from our heads to the computer screen of our LEGIONS of clamoring fans.

(Author’s note: Maybe not directly from your head…)

OK, here’s the end of my extreme sarcasm.

I’m all for the idea of creating, managing and maintaining an online presence – call it your personal brand. But mythologizing the minutia dredged from the corners of the quotidian moments of our decidedly people-sized lives can be dangerous. Here in the real world, we call it megalomania. And we’re all in danger!

Here are three assumptions creatives make about their online lives and why they’re wrong:

Everything I do is globally significant and everyone wants to know about it.

I won’t argue that you might want a web tracker to tell YOU where you’ve been. For example, it’s helpful in case you were doing research and wanted to track down where you saw some vintage logo you wanted to emulate. But to think that anyone else needs or even wants to follow in your footsteps is silly. It may even lead to someone stealing your idea!

All online activities create my online presence.

There’s a huge gulf between online activities and those robust experiences of you online –the articles, poems, or campaigns you can put your name on and which, when taken together, build your brand. The last time you changed your Facebook status or added a book to your Goodreads shelf – who did you bill? Did it lead to any billable hours? How about, at the least, an idea that you could build on?

People care about every aspect of my life.

This is probably the biggest fallacy of all.  People might care about your work or the value you can add to their projects, but they don’t care about you at all!  There’s a line between blogging about social media trends in an effort to help people and tweeting about your breakfast!

I’m not saying to avoid these activities all together. At best, they fill the role that gazing out the window used to – maybe you’ll get juiced up and energized by a little downtime. But don’t think of this downtime as work itself. Professionalizing your leisure is not a good idea. My advice? Take your eyes off the screen once in a while. Life is now elsewhere.