A coworker recently forwarded me an article from the Baltimore Sun about a phenomenon the writer calls "online sociability fatigue."  I call it good timing, because when I got her email I hadn't touched my Twitter or Google Reader feeds in about a week.

As a person with  more than 1000 unread items in Google Reader at any given time, a twice-weekly blog, a Twitter feed for the not-as-blog-worthy tidbits, a Flickr stream, and a healthy addiction to Facebook Scrabble (among other things), it's out of character for me to go even a few days without any of these things.  I even considered getting a smartphone just so I could stay connected and productive during the rare times I don't have access to a computer, like the three-hour drive up to my parents' place in Pennsylvania.  This description doesn't even address the blogging, Facebooking, Flickring and YouTube-ing for work, which is another story entirely.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if I shouldn't be doing more to stop the tide here.  How much is just too much?  I have friends who don't log into Facebook every day and they get along just fine.  Though I don't think it takes up too much of my time, on days when I consciously shun my computer upon returning home from work I do get a lot more accomplished.  I play my flute, I sing classic show tunes, I pick up around the house or plant a new garden.  If I feel especially brave, I might make plans with friends.

Somehow, these seem like the elements of my life that constitute the meat, the stuff that means something.  In the end, the best friendships are ones where I can invite someone over and sit on the porch with a drink for a couple hours (geographic location permitting, of course).  Likewise, at some point I feel like a lot of the time I spend looking at art blogs should be spent exploring with my camera.

We constantly seek balance in our lives, and in many ways the irresistible flood of information coming from the Intarwebs is usurping the grounded, physical time we need to keep it together.  The thought of turning my computer off for a day, even though I still have one at work, scares me a little.  But I think it's something to aspire to.  I think I need to refocus on what I did before the Internet became a way of life (and yes, I do remember).

And, ironically, I'll probably blog about it along the way.

I've had a few interesting conversations this week around self-publishing in general and blogging in particular. A coworker and fellow blogger shared my sentiments about blogs: sometimes it's just so difficult to keep the momentum going.

The question I've been playing with – and relating to the relative difficulty of maintaining a serious blog – is, what validates self-published work? Before the internet allowed us infinite possibilities for self-promotion, creative work passed through a limited number of routes to reach the public eye. Written work like mine would need to be picked up by a newspaper, a magazine, a publishing company even.

Now, with a truly global market for ideas, self-promotion has become an art in its own right. Words + Images exists not because an editor thought it worth printing, but because I imagined it and created a home for it and made a commitment to complete one post weekly, no later than Tuesday morning. Promotion, visibility, recognition, and success are not guaranteed, and standard rules of advertising do not apply. Instead, underground phenomena spread virally, promoted by millions of Gen Y'ers and Millenials vying to be the first to discover the newest cool thing on the internet.

Is this what validates self-published work? Trying to get one's work seen – whether in a gallery, magazine, book, etc. -- in traditional media can be incredibly demoralizing, and self-publishing can at times feel like an easy way out. Lately I'm inclined to feel otherwise. Keeping this blog going is a labor of love and it relies entirely on my own personal motivation to keep making the time commitment week after week. Not only have I continued to write for Words + Images, but I have spent many a weekend correcting bugs, solving emergencies, and attending to other overhead.

I'm of a mind that self-publishing and the internet have provided the next evolution of “art for art's sake.” With it we see a liberation of the artist, and a new kind of dedication: one that doesn't rely on acceptance letters or royalties or good reviews, but solely on the creator's will to keep it alive even when it seems no one is looking.