This morning a friend IMed me to ask if I had seen the season finale of Hunting Season (for the uninitiated—by which I mean, people who are not gay guys who live in New York—it’s this terrible web series about gay men filmed in the style of Sex and the City, complete with the full-frontal nudity and insipid insights). The answer, obviously, is no, I have not. For the most part, I was unaware of it completely; I had no interest, and I knew it was going to piss me off. My friend wanted me to watch the season finale because, in his words, “basically the lesson is that all of your problems disappear if you go have bareback sex at an underwear party with strangers.”

After talking to another creative friend who was (rightfully) upset about it, I thought, “Goddammit, now I’m going to have to watch this thing, and it’s going to make me mad, and then I’ll be fixated on it, and I’ll probably write at least three blog posts and eighteen tweets about it. In all caps.” 

But then I realized: I don’t have to watch it. I don’t have to have an opinion about it. 

It’s ben a couple of weeks since I unfollowed everyone (again) on Tumblr. Some friends were annoyed with me, and I tried to explain that I still read their blogs (as well as the blogs of people who I do not know but followed on Tumblr), but that I just needed a break from the constant stream of content. I’m sure I’m not the only user who refreshed his dashboard, convinced that someone had published something new even if Tumblr hadn’t yet notified me of it. I was getting to the point where I was taking my frustrations out about work, about my social life, and other things on my blog, and replying in haste to things I saw on the internet. Most of my news came from Tumblr. Most of the things that I hate-read came from links on Tumblr. 

Because I’ve been so focused on work in the last few weeks with the latest issue close, and because I was traveling, and because I don’t even really look at the internet on the weekends because I’m away from my computer, I’ve found that I’ve missed out on a lot of things. Well, “missed” only because it didn’t fall under my radar. I can also tell you that in the last few weeks, I’ve been much happier and calmer. I haven’t reacted so strongly to things, I’ve gotten a bit more sleep than usual, and I’ve been much more productive at work. 

And I have no idea what is going on on the internet. There haven’t been as many emails in which people bitch about something else online. (Although, for sure, there have been some, because people are still dummies even when you’re not paying attention to them (because someone is always paying attention.)) I’ve been less focused on the things that piss me off. I haven’t been checking the sites that make me angry. Instead, I’ve been doing work and, when not at work, reading books. (I’ve eagerly fallen head-first into Anna Karenina. That’s something I never thought I would write.)

Anyway, blah blah blah. But for someone who in the last six months has nearly constantly been on the verge of pulling out his own hair, it’s a small step in the path to a place I’d like to be for a while.