WASTE · 3:40pm Jun 28th, 2020
I've been thinking lately. About my life, my motivation, Fimfiction, and what I've been doing for these last few years. And I'm a little concerned about what this means for me.
Let me explain.
I have been on Fimfiction since I was seventeen years old. I'm now twenty-two. That's nearly four and a half years I've been on this website. And I have spent a lot of time here. Probably more than I should. People who have seen my profile probably know that I'm potentially online pretty much all hours of the day. And I stay online. I spend a lot of time around here reading fanfiction and chatting in group threads. That's all well and good on its own––there are plenty of fanfictions on this site that are good, and I do kind of enjoy talking with people––but at what point does it become too much?
This is obviously a question without a clear answer. But I feel I do have some kind of answer. As I said, I spend a lot of time here, and if the frequency of how online I am is any indication, it's probably too much. And I say it's too much for one simply reason: Fimfiction is distracting me from other things I could be doing. Fimfiction is distracting me from my life. Fimfiction is even, ironically enough, distracting me from writing fanfiction. You know, the thing that this site is meant for.
I have lots of other things in my life I could be doing. I have books. I have puzzles and stuff. I have stuff I want to write, and haven't yet. But whenever I could be doing that stuff, I find myself being drawn back to Fimfiction like a moth to a flame. Maybe it's because it's the first website I really got engaged in, but I still consider it rather concerning. Remember when Fimfiction went down for about a day a while back? For a lot of that time, I found myself constantly (let's be honest here, it basically was constantly) loading it to see if the error message had gone away. It upsets me that I was like this.
But after a while, I tried to move on to other things. I've been reading other things even with Fimfiction in my life, sure, but I want to have more time. I want to have more time with my life in general. If I lessen my time here, I'll have more time outside of it. And if I lessen my time on Fimfiction, I'll lessen my time online in general, I feel––the only other websites I spend a lot of time on are Reddit and Instagram; with the former, it's a little distraction that I could pretty easily spend less time on, and the latter is something I consider to be more of a photo album combined with a place to get certain types of news that I can't get anywhere else.
All this is to say:
Fimfiction is a waste of my time and I would like to waste less of my time.
To give my offline life more time, and to break this almost addiction to Fimfiction, I will be spending significantly less time here. Maybe one day I'll go offline forever, but I don't see myself doing that yet. I still have some obligations I'd like to hold onto. For example, I still edit for a story or two, and I don't want to throw those I work with under the bus.
So, basically, I'll be going on what I'll call a semi-hiatus. Which will go as follows:
-There are many stories in my read it later folder, but I'll be reading a couple that I especially want to read. During this time, I'll be on Fimfiction as normal.
-After this, I will make an effort to visit Fimfiction less often. Tentative goal to start is one visit per day. And this will probably be adjusted accordingly. Like, potentially after seven days of this, I'll try to visit even less often.
-I will only have it so I get emails for private messages, instead of comment replies as well. This should be okay since I rarely get PMs anyway. I'll still respond to them most likely.
-I won't ask for a ban since I don't think that would be helpful. This is a test of my resolve. Plus, I might need to come in every once in a while for one reason or another.
I will probably make another post right before my self-imposed semi-hiatus goes into effect. I just want to get this out there now, in case I change my mind––and I don't want to change my mind over this. Less Fimfiction can only be a good thing for me, I feel.
That's really all I have to say as of now. It might be a few days, maybe, before my semi-hiatus goes into effect, or it might be longer. But I intend to make it happen. And that's what I have to say about it.
I know the feeling, and I hope that you can reorder your time scheduling to do if not everything most of it. :D
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Thanks!
Hopefully I'll be able to do that. With this break I also hope to actually write fanfiction in some capacity, like I've said. So I guess a goal is to have something ready to publish when I come back in full, whenever that may be. I do want to contribute stuff...
Take care Menace, do come back if it's still standing and not on fire though.