Reverb 10, Day Two

Today's Reverb prompt is: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it?

Oh honey, anyone who knows me well knows the answer to this one and you're working in it right now: It's the internet, the world wide web, the intarwebz, the internetz, the timesink of my life, the one thing I can't live without! I get home and wake up this big, beautiful iMac desktop. I confess that I often have my Macbook on the bed with me, it sleeps when I do, it wakes up shortly after I do, why yes, I check my email before I crawl out of bed in the morning. Hi, my name's Kathleen and I'm addicted to the internet. I have five email addresses! My idea of hell is a vacation without the internet. I'm taking Asia and India to Hard Labor Creek State Park tomorrow and we'll be back Sunday and there is no wifi there and even though there are horses and long trail rides and good friends to take my mind off the fact that there is no internet and I will be very busy with all of that, if there was wifi, my Macbook would be coming along. All of you are out there doing cool things and some of you are posting pithy thoughts and writing about your fascinating lives and I am not around to share it with you. Eeep! But when I'm hitting refresh all the time, I'm not writing. And I must write. It's who I am. So, self discipline is the key.

Second part of the prompt asks can I eliminate this thing that keeps me from writing? No. I cannot. I do try and limit the useless surfing that I sometime find myself doing. Hitting refresh over and over at either Live Journal or Facebook just to see if you've updated is a sign that I need to get up from my computer and walk away. But I love you! I love the things you tell me. I love that with the internet I've made friends who live all over the world. Driving home tonight I was talking to a friend from California. We've met in the flesh, but we first met online. I love the web for it's brought me several close friends and I've met them at least once, some I've met up with two or three times, but all of them I never would have known had the internet not been there. Fascinating women with sharp wits and interesting thoughts about the world and our place in it and all of them I met because of the internet. How cool is that?

And here's where I combine my love of writing with the internet. Half my writing is done online in this blog or my other one (the one that you're not going to see unless you're involved in fandom). I love emails. I love this blog. Often there is no feedback to what I'm writing, but that's ok. Maybe you only stop by to look at the pictures I put up of India and Asia and quickly navigate away if there aren't any, but no matter. I love thinking out loud here. It's one of my diaries and I can't imagine a life where I don't write about it. This Reverb 10 concept is great because I'm writing about writing and doing it all online and I never would have known about it without the web. If you're reading this, thanks for doing so. I hope you're enjoying what I have to share with the world.