Brandon Moon

Well, I made it through my Internet fast!

While it was a good experience, it wasn’t exactly what I thought it’d be. What surprised me most is that it wasn’t really that different. I didn’t have compulsive urges to get online or anything. But it was surprisingly difficult to cut the Internet out of my life entirely. Something I pretty much failed at doing.

First of all, I allowed email during the fast. Basically, there was too much of a chance I could miss an important email from work. I also had to check things like mint.com or my bank, since I do my money management online. And, well, I have a pretty pitiful music collection. I tried for the first half of the week to only listen to my music, but eventually I broke down and went back to Pandora. Oh, and I left my weather widget running…

In short, I had a surprising amount of interaction with the Internet in spite of my fast. There’s a good portion of my life that does rely on the Internet. I don’t consider this an unhealthy thing though. Finances, email, etc. are all very good uses of the Internet in my mind.

What I did succeed at was untying myself entirely from my social networks. No Facebook, no Google+ (I do check it from time to time), no Twitter, no blog, no socializing of any kind on the Internet really.

Frankly, staying away from social networks didn’t really change things much for me. It was kinda nice to not worry about finding cool links to share, or having to compose a blog post, or anything like that. But that’s fun stuff I do with my free time, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Also, I wasn’t left with a bunch of free time and not knowing what to do with myself. Turns out I just read a lot more, and took up some old hobbies, like origami (which is a lot of fun actually).

The place where my Internet fast made the biggest difference was at work. First of all, I have to make a point here. A bit of browsing during work hours is actually a good thing. To be hyper-focused on one thing can actually be counterproductive sometimes. It’s good to take a break once in a while, and browsing is a perfectly good way to do that.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve wasted quite a bit of time browsing when I should be working. Not to excess or anything (I do get my work done), but it can be a bit of a distraction. I found that during work hours, if I took my breaks doing other things (like origami), it fulfilled that break without being too distracting. It was much easier to get back into the flow of work and get stuff done. This is something I’d like to keep doing.

And so, I’m back online. Without too much damage (either from being away, or from coming back). And I’m pleased to say, I think I’ve already found a pretty good balance.

Well… I did it. I made it to the end of my 30 day challenge. And quite frankly… I’m amazed I made it this far. There were a few times I almost gave up. And there were a few times I struggled to get a post out that day. But here I am, at the end, having completed it… and it feels good!

The more important part, however, is what I learned from this experience:

1. I learned that I actually have a little bit of talent at this. I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have expressed appreciation for and interest in my writing. Is my style perfect? No. Do I have awesome structure to my posts? No. But at least I can communicate my ideas (at least somewhat clearly). And it’s helped me to appreciate my own writing a lot more than before.

2. I learned that there is so much to say, and so few people who care. This may seem contrary to the last post, but let me explain. While I truly appreciate the people who read my blog (that means you), I know that compared with the readership of a lot of other blogs out there, mine is in the minority. I’d be willing to wage, however, that most of you have a blog of your own. Maybe you don’t post much on it, maybe you do, but either way, most of us are generating content online. Amazing amounts of content, really. And sometimes I wonder… are we generating more content than we can consume? I can’t possibly keep up with everything out there that’s being published online every day… nobody can. So why do we get upset when so few people pay attention to what we write? It’s a funny conundrum.

3. Some topics are more controversial than others. My apple posts and my Harry Potter post drew a lot of attention. Yet others, such as my posts about Tasha didn’t seem to draw much attention. I find this a little sad, really, that we express more interest in things of less significance, and less interest in the more meaningful things. It’s not that I don’t doubt you read them, and maybe you really did appreciate them, but I didn’t always see it (though I did see it from my wife—love you honey!).

4. It’s hard to come up with something interesting to post about every day! I’ll admit, a lot of those posts I didn’t spend a ton of time on, and they were kind of grudgingly finished. I also learned that if I open my eyes, I can find something interesting to post about fairly often. And I definitely enjoy posting about something I’m interested in much more than posting about less interesting things.

I’ve enjoyed my adventure. Now it’s time to think up another 30 day challenge!

(Also, this is my 100th post on this blog. How’s that for awesome timing?)

Well, I’m nearing the end of my thirty day challenge. It’s been an interesting adventure, and I’ll have more to say tomorrow (the last post of the challenge), but I wanted to discuss my plans for the week after I finish.

I’ve always heard of people doing such things as a “Facebook fast” or “Internet fast” and always thought that a little strange. I guess I assumed I was good enough at managing my online life that I didn’t need something like that. Since starting this thirty day challenge, I’ve reconsidered. I still think I’m capable of managing my online life, but I can see some positive benefits from being offline.

First of all, computers have made it so easy to distract ourselves. The Internet is so gosh darn ubiquitous nowadays. The recent trend of “apps” has made it even worse. Now not only is there more content out there than we can possibly consume, but we also have so many different ways of consuming it! “Should I check Twitter through my phone or my computer? The website or a different app that also brings in Facebook and Foursquare and LinkedIn? Oh my goodness, there’s a new Twitter app out there. Is it better than my current app? I’ll have to try it.” We almost can’t help ourselves.

My friend wrote a rather cool blog post about how enabling the Internet is. Specialists have been brought down a peg, due to the vast amount of knowledge available—free of charge—on the Internet. We will never be held back for lack of knowledge. We assume, however, that knowledge and wisdom are the same thing. While knowledge can be enabling, it can also be encumbering. It seems that with so much information out there, we end up losing our passions. We hop from one idea to the next, never really delving deep into any one, and consequently not benefiting that much. I myself am guilty of this all the time.

I’m not sure how or when it happened, but somehow I put more importance on the Internet and social networking and “cool things” that I have missed out on some of the things I’m most interested in. Guitar, piano, hiking, building stuff with my hands, enjoying the people I’m with, and most of all… being satisfied with where I am. The incredibly fast pace of the Internet has me always feeling antsy, like I’ve got to get on to the next big thing. I want to enjoy now.

And so, I’ve decided that next week I will take an “Internet fast.” I will turn of data on my phone (my phone becomes surprisingly boring without data), I will restrict myself to work related browsing while at work (something I should be doing more of anyways), and I will stay offline wherever else I am. I will find other ways to enjoy my time, and I will catch up on the things I should be paying more attention to.

I’m excited!

(Don’t worry though, I’ll be back to post more. Maybe not as much, but I’ll be here.)

I admit, I’m biased against Apple. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ve probably already noticed this.

I’ve also been fascinated by the idea of fanboyism and brand loyalty.

So here’s my question: Why do I dislike Apple so much?

I love my webOS phone, but if I had to give it up, I’d be willing to give WP7 a try, or maybe even an Android phone. Anything but the iPhone really. But when you think about it, Apple is the one out there with the best specs on their iPhone, and the most polished OS. So why do I avoid it like the plague?

I’ve been wondering about this lately. The brand loyalty articles say that faced with a choice between equally valued options, choosing one will decrease your opinion of the others, right? I still think webOS has awesome potential, and I’ll admit… I’m a little bit of a fanboy. But why do I dislike Apple so much more than the other options?

The only thing I can come up with is that I dislike Apple’s policies so much that I refuse to buy their products, even if they are better. The more ground Apple makes in the technology market, the more frustrated with them I become. Am I the only one that thinks Apple is becoming a bit of a bully? They remind me of Microsoft as they began to face their anti-trust lawsuits.

Am I being irrational here? What do you think?

(I missed a post yesterday, so I post-dated this one. I’m not trying to fool anyone.)

This last weekend my wife and I attended a family reunion on my mother’s side. Since my mom has been helping out at Brighton girls camp for years, we were able to use the facilities for our reunion. We’ve done this for a number of reunions in the past, but it’s always a lot of fun. They have a zipline and some other ropes-course activities. One was particularly fun, called the “perch.” Basically it’s a tall tree that you climb, then stand on top of. Oh, and the top rotates. You’re supposed to jump off and hit a bell that’s hanging just a little ways off. It was a lot of fun.

We got to drive up with my brother and his two adorable kids. One of them, Benson, always keeps us entertained with his antics. You can read more about them on my wife’s blog. He sure was excited to go camping.

I love going camping with my sweetheart! Even if said camping is really in a cabin, and said cabin is full of all of my family. Besides, my nieces and nephews are super cute. It’s funny to see my siblings trying to put them all to bed in the same cabin. Adri was quite distraught when I told her I was going to sleep in a bed next to my wife instead of next to her.

In short, it was a very fun weekend. I look forward to the next reunion in Bear Lake!

Last weekend, after the Lavender 5k Run, my wife and I headed up to Joe’s Valley by Fairview, UT where my brother’s in-laws own a cabin. We went to see my two twin nieces get baptized. It’s about a two hour drive, so we were rushing home from the 5k to get showered and back on the road, since the baptism was planned for 12:00. We were on the road just a bit after 10:00, but we seemed to be moving along OK and I wasn’t worried.

It was probably 11:00 or 11:15 when we pulled through Fairview and headed up the canyon. I figured we were doing great on time, but I was careful to check the map my brother had given me. He had described the next turn as a tricky one, so I wanted to make sure I got it right. I mentally added the distance to my trip meter and stored the number in my brain for future reference.

As we headed up the canyon and the my trip meter got close to the calculated distance, I started to look for a turn-off onto a dirt road, as described. All I found was this:

In case you can’t tell, that’s a small four-wheeler style road that goes through a creek and up a steep hill. Just pulling onto the road and up to the river was a steep enough decline to make it difficult for my car to reverse back up. And we were supposed to continue up this road for 13 miles?!

I figured this couldn’t be the road, but yet it was the only dirt road that came close to fitting the description at that distance up the road. It was supposed to be a tricky turn-off. Nobody told me I’d need a truck though! Why hadn’t anyone said anything?

We had no cell reception, so we couldn’t call anyone or look up any maps on our phone. All we could do was drive back and forth on that section of the road a couple times—to no avail. We even said a prayer for help. Eventually we turned back, figuring we’d done all we could.

When we reached Fairview again, I started to realize that we had come down that canyon fast for 18 miles. We had reception again once we got down there, so I pulled out my phone and looked at the map. Sure enough, we hadn’t gone far enough up the canyon. In my hasty arithmetic in my head, I had added 8 to my trip meter, instead of 18. We were way off!

By now it was 12:00, and we knew we’d already missed the baptism, but we headed up anyways, at least to be able to see our family and congratulate my nieces. Except for one small misdirected turn, we got there with no problems after that. The drive was amazing, and we couldn’t help but take some pictures.

We had a lot of fun in the short time we were up there. Benson amused us with his clever sayings and misunderstandings, we got to see the nieces and nephews ride horses (I can’t believe they let some of them ride by themselves!), and even got to see some baby birds! It was amazing.

I also want to congratulate my two nieces for getting baptized. In our church, baptism is a way that we promise God we will follow his commandments and always remember him. In return, He blesses us with his Holy Spirit, which can help us recognize right and wrong. We also believe that little children are innocent; they don’t need baptism until they turn eight and can understand and make that kind of commitment. That’s why I’m so proud of them: they’ve made the decision for themselves to follow Christ. And I know that He is the source of true happiness.