Looking back at my recent break

I recently took two weeks off from certain websites. The general guideline was that I would not allow myself to post, comment, upload, or engage in any activity that would indicate that I was available. Keep in mind that these rules did not apply to scheduled posts (online activity was prior to the break but the date shown was during). Since this was my first break of this type, I allowed myself one exception, which I will explain later.

NOTE: Since writing this post, I took another two-week break.


In case you missed it, the primary purpose of this break relates to security. If you are active on the internet, it can be difficult to disappear for a period of time without people noticing. This can include vacations, in which I'm not always home.

I found two weeks for my initial break. When the time came, I found that I made a couple mistakes. The first is that I didn't note the dates well enough. The break snuck up on me. For this first break only, I was trying to be open about the time off. This included the decision to put a last Tweet on Twitter to say that my break was about to start. This Tweet should have gone out the last day prior to the break. Instead, I sent out the Tweet of the first day of the break.

The other mistake was that I was too slow disconnecting. I was still visiting the sites. When I saw a couple posts that I liked, I hit the Like button. That button was supposed to be off limits. In response to this mistake, I cut back on even reading. I kept my defaults, so these sites still opened, but I rarely scrolled.

My big exception on initial handling of this break was that I allowed myself to try out a free-to-play game while increasing time on another. While my break freed up some time for me, I didn't want to go straight to some of my productivity goals. In the future, I will try to include free-to-play games with my list of what I make off limits.

What I have not yet made clear is that I had secondary reasons for my down time. One of these relates to my increased load of personal projects over the years. By freeing up time normally spent online, I can get back some of my time. To an extent, I want to enjoy it. This doesn't mean that I will typically goof off. I will try to take care of some of my workload in hopes of making the rest of the year a little less stressful. In other words, I want to get some work done.

Obviously, this break was not meant to be my last. I have already scheduled my next break. I don't want to provide too much detail, but I want to partially explain my process.

Part of the purpose for these breaks is to keep people from knowing certain things that are going on in my life. I would much rather keep people guessing than to create a rigid time frame. For this reason, I have a random component that I will be using when selecting the timing of these breaks. I will primarily target two weeks, but I will also include a mechanism to allow for longer breaks. I have already established the time in which my next break will occur. Again, I will not announce these dates ahead of time. Instead, I will seem to suddenly disappear.