Starting to Reduce my Internet Hours!

That's right! I need to reduce my internet hours (I think!), so today is the dawn of my new net using era...

If all goes to plan, and we sell this house, the area we are looking at moving to, and a house that we have our eye on in particular, does not have the same level of internet availability that we do here in town. So, after a short discussion with our internet provider, I have an idea of the type of net access I will if we do move.

However, the different options are unfortunately less internet hours than our current plan, and at a greater cost :( So, we have decided that we should try to reduce our internet usage to see just what we can get down to and then make a deicsion on which new plan will be adequate - we really don't want to go spending a whole lot more on telecommunications after my massive effort to reduce this area in our budget. So therefore if we want to remain at our current expenditure (or less!) we need to reduce our usage.

The plan is to not turn our computer on of a Tuesday and Thursday, and probably not even during the day of the weekends. That way we can see how much difference just 2 days without accessing emails or the internet makes to our usage and we can always take out more days if needed. (Or perhaps add one back in!!)

But today is Tuesday - why are you online, you say! Well, I made my NaBloPoMo pledge to make a blog entry every day this month and I intend to keep that promise. So, until the end of July, I will still be logging in and doing my blog entry even if it is a Tuesday or Thursday. I'm quite sure a few minutes online on these two days for this week and next wont make a dramatic difference ;)

I'm soooo used to having the computer always on and regularly checking my emails, so this will no doubt take a bit of getting used to and will be quite a habit to break. But I'm quite sure that I can do it (my sanity may suffer a little though!).

My internet usage has slowly crept up over the past couple of years as I now have quite a lot of blogs and websites I like to check out and I do have a tendency to get side tracked and time gets away from me VERY easily... I'm sure that two days without the internet will give me back a considerable amount of time which can only benefit my family (as per yesterday's entries). I have used the net as my little *time out* so now I am going to have to find some other way to refresh myself and get that little mental break on those days. I have had a feeling for some time now that the internet was using up a lot of time, but I hadn't wanted to acknowledge just how much as it was MY time...

What am I going to do?? Well I'm still not sure, but we did have a little outing to the library this morning and I have borrowed some books to read, and also a book aimed at teaching children to knit... I figure if its aimed at children, I'm sure to be able to understand it! I can knit quite baiscally, however having RSI in both wrists has meant that I don't knit very often as it hurts. I'm hoping though that if I learn properly (as opposed to me teaching myself from what I remembered as a child), my technique may improve and therefore reduce the impact on my wrists... but only time will tell - I may just have to accept that I cannot knit!

So there you have it... our plan to reduce our internet usage for a few months to see what happens. Nothing really to post about food today though... although my organic vegetable order should be here in a couple of hours!