Particularly Absent, But With Reason

February 22, 2010 | Filed under Online

I’ve been particularly absent from the online community in recent months, and have even deliberately cut back on accounts I hold online. I have deleted both my Twitter account and my Snark Forums account. LiveJournal has been downsized, Formspring has been deactivated, Google Reader has been downsized, and Facebook friends have been culled.

There are a number of reasons for this:

  1. I have no internet access at home. I’ve obviously recently moved out of home and considering that I’m rarely at home as I’m either at work or out and about, I don’t see the point of paying $100AUD a month for a USB wireless modem for my laptop, as it wouldn’t be worthwhile to get a landline.
  2. I need to limit my internet usage at work. I am currently snowed under at work with a million tasks and responsibilities to prioritise. This situation isn’t going to change for the next six months. Having superfluous social networking accounts is only a distraction above and beyond what’s reasonable. Checking personal email throughout the day is reasonable. Spending half the day on Twitter and a forum isn’t.
  3. My mobile phone bill was going through the roof. It became a habit for me to catch up on people’s Tweets and forum updates on my phone when I was commuting to and from work. That’s two hours worth of mobile browsing each day – my bank account can’t keep up with the charges I sustained. The less accounts I have, the less I browse, the less my bill.
  4. I have other time-consuming offline commitments. Long story short, I am likely to be purchasing a property in the next couple of months. As such my weekends are taken up with inspecting properties for sale, and my weekdays are taken up with talking finances over the phone.

I am of course, still contactable via email, but because of demands on my time, replies may be late coming. I may in time sign up again for social networking sites, but it’s not something I can envision for the next six months. I am still keeping up with blog entries (however little I comment) and will continue to blog, however sporadically. I just need to learn to prioritise my commitments (e.g. concentrate on work) and to cut down on unnecessary expenditure (e.g. outrageous mobile browsing bills) in order to achieve my goals.

11 Responses to Particularly Absent, But With Reason

  1. I’ve always admired you for your ability to cut back on extraneous responsibilities/commitments (for lack of better term) when necessary. Good luck with your prospective property purchase!

    Manda on February 22, 2010 #

  2. Ditto. Except I have no internet at work which helps me NOT do personal stuff during work and concentrate on actual work.

    *high five*

    FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com on February 22, 2010 #

  3. you’re buying a house! How exciting! :D

    Noemi on February 22, 2010 #

  4. hey amanda! wow buying a property! well best wishes with that! =]

    suze on February 22, 2010 #

  5. I am so glad that things are going well for you, Amanda (besides having no internet – but like you said there are more important things in life)! Thanks for checking in with us.

    Caity on February 22, 2010 #

  6. :OOOO A house…very nice. :D Good luck! ^^-b

    Noellium on February 23, 2010 #

  7. Good luck with your future purchase, Amanda!

    Erin on February 24, 2010 #

  8. So /that’s/ why my Facebook friends count dropped again. :P

    Good luck with real life. :)

    Macca on February 24, 2010 #

  9. Wow, good luck in buying a property in the future! We will miss you on Snark! :(

    Regina on February 27, 2010 #

  10. Ahem sister. Does it feel weird not being all social online?

    monkee on February 28, 2010 #

  11. Awww… I’m sorry to see you go :-(
    I hope you’ll come back when things let up a bit, though knowing how much you enjoy being busy, not too sure what that might mean for you.

    Oh and good luck with buying of property. :)

    I hope that you’ll at least update here once in a while.

    Vera on March 2, 2010 #

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