Time. Where does it go? Clocks tick, the days pass, and the time we have left for doing whatever we’re supposed to be doing while on Earth dwindles.

And so I’m cutting back on social media use. (Wow, that’s a hard switch from the melancholic opening…) It should have been done quite a long time ago, either excising some uses totally or being more disciplined. But, better late than never.

I’m a writer and a blogger. Not my source of income, my “day job” as it were, but what I will eventually be. (Full-time writer, living solely off writing income. Making progress, but still quite some time away…)

And social media is getting in the way. There are so many distractions….

It seems that almost every writer, published or aspiring, has a social media presence. But, some appear less than others…. Could they be… actually writing??????

I have a wife, a full-time day job, and two cats and a vegetable garden. They all require time and attention. This obviously cuts into time spent writing. So… something has to go.

I know! Social networking!!!! (Well, not all of it…)

There are writing Groups on Facebook, on LinkedIn and on Google+. Not to mention old-school discussion forums going back to the 1990s. Lots of writers writing on them. When do they actually write write, (as opposed to social write?) Maybe they’re full-timer writers, and posting away on Facebook or a forum is just their equivalent of yakking it up with colleagues during break times and lunch at a day job? Maybe they’re aspiring writers getting help, advice, commiseration or just trying to “feel like a writer” by hanging out with others.

But it ocurred to me that no real writer writing is actually getting done (well, in my house.) Some, but not enough. I mean, progress is being made on a novel, but more serious application of planning and research and such has to be made to the draft. You know, writing.

So I’ve begun limiting my time on the social nets. Google+ has largely disappeared from my social habits. Once in a great while I visit it, but mostly for a blog page I maintain, or some Communities. But even that is getting rarer. Google+ was nice, but I always felt like I had to be “cool” or “really intelligent” when on there as Plussers typically dismiss Facebook as riff-raff. Which is silly, but people tend to find a need to justify actions (i.e. not liking one thing or preferring it to something else. If your FB Timeline is full of garbage and riff-raff, that’s your fault.) And even Facebook for me has dropped off, I actually go days without using it. LinkedIn? Hah! Maybe once a week. I do make a daily habit of using Awestruck, a Catholic social network.

So, I have been strengthening the habit of writing. Every day. Not just often. Daily. At first it was just getting off of social networks. I survived that. Now to continue with daily progress of… writing. (This has been an issue with me for decades. And the struggles to do that appear here on this blog once in a while. Give me credit, except for when I was drinking, I never gave up…)

This is a follow up to a post on SoberCatholic.com, right here: The Sober Catholic Trudge Report Will No Longer Be out.

This post (“Becoming Antisocial”) has been planned for a while, but as it happens an impromptu visit to my Twitter account made me discover that I was irritating someone. Anyway, Twitter is another social network I’ve largely ignored. But I’ve been doing that for years. Why would a writer use Twitter? One hundred and forty characters? Seriously? How can a writer limit themselves to that??????

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