d’Arte Board

Today, the time has come for me to delete my personal email address. The funny thing about my experiment is that I keep finding out about others who are embarking on similar adventures, away from the imaginary womb of the internet and back into the scary reality of, well, reality. Am I tapping into some collective subconsciousness, one wherein other people are also wondering what exact relevance all of this electronic interconnectivity has toward their lives? Or am I seeing, and engaging in, the start of a fad; a popular way of thinking, not unlike that which began myspace, and then harbingered the flood from Myspace to Facebook, et al? Some sort of actual Neo-Luddism? It is just as possible that I am placing too much emphasis on societal undercurrents that are best left alone, or at least ones that are not worth the time it takes to understand them. However, I can’t help but feel that there is a better, more fulfilling way to construct a conversation with another human being than by first logging in to something innately devoid of humanity and neglectful to the nuanced expressions of life. This is what I am in search of; I’ll let you know when/if I find it.

This week will begin my first round of sending out letters. It should be interesting to see what kind of reactions they solicit.

For the record, there has been some confusion about why, if I am trying to get away from the internet, I remain writing for this blog, and why I am keeping my business email/website/myspace profile. The answer is that I never intended this experiment to be about total versus zero internet exposure. What I am trying to gain is insight into what happens when you eliminate the extraneous exposure on the internet, and what you gain or lose from spending that time out in the real world. I realize that for my business to succeed, I need to have an online presence, therefore it remains; this blog on the other hand, is personal, but I see it also as functional, to both my art and my photography business.