All kinds of things occur to me during the day, so I decided to give myself a place to keep them. (Plus I wanted to make a little book.)

Here’s some stuff from last night’s Comics Club, which took place at my house — just to show that I’m still alive, although this never-ending grey May is an endurance test.

So here are some random, weird drawings…

(There was some debate about the spelling and meaning of the word. This spelling is incorrect, but much more fun.)

A Doug.

I can’t answer for the things that go through my brain.

I really like that the concept of “digital minimalism” is catching on as a possible antidote to the palm-reading zombies you see everywhere in public. The term was coined by Cal Newport, who has a book of the same name that just came out. (Of course.)

I’d like to read the book, though I also suspect from the samples I’ve read that there isn’t anything new in there for me, since I’m already a little ways down that road. (“Turn your home screen black and white.” One better, Cal: I don’t have a ‘home screen’. “Limit your use of Facebook.” Again, check: I deleted my account.)

I really want someone to come up with a coherent philosophy and strategy for this stuff. Or perhaps that’s my job, if I want a system that’s really going to fit me and my situation.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with a little form that I’m using every work day. Here are the fields in order, clockwise from upper-left:
– When I’m going to check my e-mail and RSS feeds
– What times I’m going to be unplugged (offline)
– Any activities I need to do online (state my intention, go on, do that thing, leave)
– Ideas to research (so instead of popping online to start searching and browsing, I bank these for when I choose to do that)

I’m not always sticking to it 100%, but it’s really helping me remember during the day what my ‘meta-intention’ is around using the internet.

Does it seem like I’m obsessed with this stuff? I suppose I am — but there’s so much I want to do in this life, and spending stretches of my day online tends to just leave me feeling regretful and sad.

I have to trim the words down as much as possible when making these comics, but sometimes that makes things sound odd or ambiguous.

What I meant above was that, back in my twenties, I used my journals as a place to analyze every thought and experience — not that I was scrutinizing those journals now.

(I need to plan out the text for these better instead of just writing them on the fly and literally writing myself into a corner!)

P.S. My comic is now live!
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