The revised Thirty Minute But Not on Sundays Pledge

As you can tell from the title of this post, my thirty minute pledge doesn't quite work. I agree with the idea in principle, and I did get a lot of things accomplished in the time I reclaimed from the life-eating interwebs:




Monday - I watched Doctor Who. Which sounds like another waste of time, but pre-pledge I would have watched it with the laptop on my lap, not really concentrated, and then annoyed mr pickledweasel by asking questions about the plot because I didn't know what was going on. I also did some work on my pattern draft for my final project for college.


Tuesday - This was a bit of a write-off as I was at work til 9pm, so by the time I got home and had a catch up with mr pickled weasel and a cup of tea, it was time for bed.


Wednesday - I finished sewing a project from One Yard Wonders that I'd started the day before during Munchkin's nap time. It was an apron that folded into a bag, and it's not really worth blogging about because a) I was making it for a five year old, but it's come out far too small and b) It was plagued with the usual lack of diagrams and difficult to decipher instructions that have been a feature of all my other One Yard Wonders projects, and I'm fed up with moaning about that book. So it's gone to grandma pickled weasel's as a craft apron for Munchkin.


Thursday - I started sewing a top for Munchkin using the Ofelia pattern from Patterns By Figgys. After the neck-facing stress I'd had, they very kindly sent me this pattern for free, and I'm slowly working my way through it. It has the french seam option, like the hoodie, and as I'm using a really fine Liberty lawn for the top, I thought I'd do it properly.


Friday - I ran around like a headless chicken getting ready for some friends to come and stay for the weekend.


Saturday - Went up a castle, drank wine, played a 1970's stock exchange based board game.*


Sunday - Walked round a bit of a reservoir, had pie, drank tea.*


I had completely forgotten that I usually spend about 30 minutes on the internet when munchkin has her daytime nap, so I cut that out as well and found another extra bit of time in the day for sewing / housework.


I found the whole week quite difficult, which makes me sound like a bit of an addict. Remaining focused and not wandering down a path of links from one site to another required a lot of concentration. Thirty minutes might sound like a reasonable amount of time, but it's really not very long at all. And some days I felt quite isolated - the internet time I had when Munchkin was napping was usually spent doing sociable things like chatting on Facebook, posting on forums or replying to emails from friends. On the days where munchkin and I spent much of our time on our own, with no play group or visits to grandma pickledweasel's house, I missed that contact, even if it was virtual.


There were also two internet based 'tasks' that I just couldn't fit into my 30 minutes. Surveys - I'm signed up to a number of market research companies, and do online surveys. Yes, yes, I know it sounds very sad, but surveys mean points, and points mean Amazon vouchers. My most recent voucher paid for Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons, and Design-It-Yourself Clothes by Cal Patch. So there. And job hunting. I have eleven different websites I check on an ad hoc basis for potential job opportunities, and it's just not possible to search them all in 30 minutes.


So my new revised pledge is to allow myself 30 minutes internet per day, apart from Sundays, which are 'free days'. Mr pickledweasel has to get up at 5am on Mondays, so goes to bed by about 9pm on Sunday nights. Mr pickledweasel in bed = no sewing with my noisy old sewing machine, so I may as well do my surveys and job searches then. Bon Salamander! Everyone's a winner. Is anyone else inspired by my internet detox, or are you still all in denial?


* Ok, so these aren't things that I did because I wasn't on the internet, but they make my life sound a bit more interesting :)