So it’s been a month. I’m sure you’re all thrilled to finally hear that I didn’t die in a fiery plane crash. In fact, I had a pleasant, if short, trip to Nashville to see my brother graduate and then a lovely week in Vancouver with John to celebrate the last few days before he turned his life over to the Man.

Yes, my fiancé is now working full-time for a huge worldwide (but relatively non-evil, IMO) corporation. It would be tragic if it didn’t pay so damn well. Still, I haven’t seen him much lately. They put him up in a hotel in town for the first week of training and flew him out of state for the second week.

I’ve started my own summer job this past week—an unpaid internship at a place downtown—so that’s kept me busy. The job’s only vaguely related to law, which is fine by me. I’m planning to find a standard summer job clerking at a small firm for the second half of the summer, but I might as well diversify a bit for now, right?

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One and a half more days until I can step back into my online life. Like I said yesterday, if I do this again, I’ll fine-tune it to where I can exercise my self-discipline without becoming an internet hermit.

I guess it’s a lesson in how hooked I am on the instant-gratification, continuously-updated constant flow of information from Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and all that. A minute ago, instead of opening tabs for Facebook and Twitter like I usually do when I turn on my computer, I opened up CNN.com. But the news hasn’t changed much since I last checked it this afternoon, so now I’m here. With nothing to say.

Yesterday I tried reading some of the featured articles on Wikipedia so that I could read SOMETHING online that wasn’t “prohibited.” I don’t remember what happened next, but I know I didn’t get very far, which is weird because you know how Wikipedia is. If you try to find one little thing for an assignment you’re working on, you’ll be there for hours. Apparently, though, if you set out TRYING to spend time on Wikipedia, nothing grabs your attention.

In other news, my foot still hurts about as much as it did yesterday. Looks like it’s sensible shoes for the rest of the week. Gotta keep this puppy fresh for Hidalgo: four shows in two days, for a total of five hours of performance time. Yowza.

Gah, I’m sure the rest of the world is talking about so many fun things in my absence. Thirty-eight more hours!

A little over halfway through, I’m feeling pretty blah about this exercise. It’s a success in the sense that I haven’t been on any of the sites I used to spend time on for the past four days, but I can’t say I’ve gotten much extra work done in the meantime. The main goal, though, is not to get more done during this week, but to strengthen my self-discipline in the future. A worthwhile goal, that, but hard to measure.

Quitting social media for a week has left me feeling disconnected and out of the loop. I’m completely cut off from my internet friends and people-I-follow, and I miss the casual chit-chat with my real-life friends, even the ones I see regularly in person.

Facebook and Twitter, for me at least, are all about being brief, witty, and shallow, and instead I find myself here on my blog, writing long, boring sentences analyzing the meaning of social media in my life. Gross.

If I do something like this again, I’m going to make it more like “only check Facebook once a day for a week.” It’s not actually interacting with people online that’s a waste of time, it’s keeping the site open and flipping over to check on it every time a new post appears.

Anyway, here are some of the things I considered posting to Facebook or Twitter today:

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You know how sometimes you put off a big task for a really long time, but when you’re finally forced to start it, you realize that it’s actually kind of fun, and you wish you’d started it earlier? This is not like that. At all.

ALSO.

Space Law is like listening to five TED talks at once, plus someone’s wacky old grandpa.

I normally don’t have much to say about politics, and today is no different, but I did live-tweet tonight’s State of the Union address (or at least the parts of it for which citizentube’s stream didn’t stall out), so I thought I’d preserve those tweets here for the heck of it. Please to enjoy.

Tuned in just in time to hear “…the President of the United States!” Watching on citizentube. #sotu

Oooh, Supreme Court justices! *fangirl moment* #sotu

What, the little Obamas don’t get to come this year? J.Crew must be so disappointed. #sotu

Ahahahaha, Biden and Pelosi are all matchy-matchy with the lavender and white. Think they called each other last night? #sotu

Hey Nancy, what are you wearing tonight? Oh, probably my lavender suit, Joe, why? Uh, no reason. #sotu

Dude, Obama is live-tweeting his own State of the Union address. Like I always say, vote for the guy who knows magic. #sotu

Does the policewoman sitting next to Michelle Obama have a cane hanging on her wrist? #sotu

Citizentube’s broadcast keeps stopping and starting, sometimes cutting out altogether. Boo. #sotu

How come 5/10 trending topics worldwide are about the SOTU, but when I switch to US, the top 3 are itampon, ipad, and nowthatsghetto? #sotu

The Houston trending topics have no reference to the SOTU at all, even when I refresh the page. Really? #sotu #trendingtopics

Yeah, repeal don’t-ask-don’t-tell! #sotu

“Let’s try common sense!” *silence* #sotu

Do the people of Haiti really chant “USA! USA! USA!” when the Red Cross or whoever pulls someone out of the rubble? #sotu

Wow, surprisingly low production values on the White House staffer panel for citizentube. These kids need a stylist, at least. #sotu

I’m still half-listening to the citizentube post-SotU question-and-answer session, and I have to say that the folks they picked are pretty good on camera and certainly knowledgeable. I guess first impressions aren’t everything. They do look super-young, though—does the White House fire people when they hit 30?

You know who else super-awesome has a Twitter account? Besides Carol Hannah, I mean. Stephen Motherfucking Hawking. Oh yes. Probably the most brilliant living physicist is on Twitter. He talks about the TV shows he likes to watch.

Damn, I love living in the future.

In related news, I’ve heard from a few people that Foursquare is the new Twitter. Really? So far I don’t understand the appeal, but apparently Twitter is hard to the get the hang of at first, too, so I’m sticking with it for a while. I’m getting my first smart phone tomorrow (squee!), so maybe that’ll liven it up a bit. Right now it seems more like Stalker’s Little Helper than anything else.

I was on the road with Kaminari from 9:30 Saturday morning to 1:15 Monday morning, making our annual appearance at the New Orleans Japan Fest. When we got to the hotel, I was disappointed to find that my laptop didn’t like the smell of the hotel’s wireless.

New Orleans, the gig, and my taiko family managed to keep me alive and happy for a whole weekend without internet access. I did tweet a lot, though, especially on the bus ride home. The fuse to the interior lights and the door blew in the first hour, so our entertainment options got pretty limited. But you won’t hear any complaints from me—having to climb in and out of the driver’s door a few times and riding home in the dark are two of smaller sacrifices we’ve had to make for this poor bus.

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I’m having a strange problem. Not a problem of much consequence, and it probably will be* resolved by the time I finish writing this post, but a strange one nonetheless.

I have two Twitter accounts: my personal one (@Prepoceros) and the one I run for taiko (@KaminariTaiko). I post to the personal account at least once a day and the taiko account only a few times a month, so I usually stay signed in to @Prepoceros whenever my computer’s on.

A few minutes ago I tried to sign out of @Prepoceros so I could sign in to @KaminariTaiko and tweet about our appearance at the New Orleans Japan Fest** this weekend. But Twitter won’t let me sign out. I’ve clicked “Sign Out” at least a dozen times, and every time it brings me back to my homepage, still logged in.

I closed and reopened the tab. No dice. I even tried logging out of Gmail—I didn’t think it would work, but goodness knows what all Google secretly runs these days.

So that’s the problem. I’m signed in to Twitter, and I CAN’T SIGN OUT. *cue creepy music*

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* I originally wrote “will probably be,” but I changed it after a rereading. I’ve never thought that rule made much sense, but in this case, it totally does. When I finish the post, the problem either will or won’t be solved; it won’t probably be solved.

I still usually prefer the sound of the “wrong” way to write those auxiliary-plus-adverb things, so this isn’t the kind of revelation that’s going to change my life. I’m sure I’ve broken the rule five other places in this post alone. Living on the edge, that’s what I do.

** Squee! It’s gonna be awesome, except for the early-morning departure tomorrow and the very-early-morning return Monday. Here’s hoping the bus makes it there in one piece. Remember my “Houston to Tupelo” video, with the four blown tires? That was last year’s New Orleans trip.