I Love This

Here is a link to an article by James Sturm, a graphic novelist who, for four months, is going to go completely off line. No email, no Google, no nothing. As he is a graphic novelist, he's going to write and draw pictures of his experiences and someone else will post them to Slate.com.

He writes about why he'd want to do such a thing. He wants to be a better parent and not always be thinking about when he can get back to his computer to check his email. He wants more time to focus on doing what he does - making comics. He wants less strain on his eyes. His first two paragraphs caught my attention:

"The last 10 years have been a blur. I had two kids, produced several graphic novels, moved to Vermont, bought a house, and started a college: a two-year, MFA-granting school for cartoonists in a small railroad village. I'll be 45 years old in October, and with middle age comes the horrifying realization that my time on earth is way too short and—biologically speaking, at least—it's all down hill from here.

'It all goes by so fast,' is one of the those clichés you hear throughout your life, but now, when another parent says it as we discuss the joys and sorrows of child rearing, it sounds like the most poignant thing I've ever heard. The question I've been wrestling with lately is whether it's all going by so fast because that's just the reality of middle age or because of the way I've been living my life. Specifically, I've started to wonder whether that feeling might be connected to all the time I spend online. Too often I sit down to dash off a quick e-mail and before I know it an hour or more has gone by."

Being a big fan of projects, as I have previously written, I love this idea. It's crazy and I wouldn't necessarily want to do it myself - but I love it. Giving up the Internet is one thing, but doing something cool like making a comic about his experiences and then sharing those with others I think is wonderful. So tune in to see how he does.