. . . and I shall extend the title, "...what doesn't contribute to my writing or my art or frankly my creativity in general". The answer to that one is easy for me! I get sucked in to the internet easily and find quite often that 30 or 45 minutes have gone by with nothing really to show for it.
While there is something to be said for gathering information about what's going on, I know very well that much of what I do is almost compulsive--one more check to see if a new blog post from someone has come up, one more e-mail check, etc. Plus, given that I have two children and thus cannot say that my time is my own, I could easily be more disciplined about how I spend my time when I am in charge (i.e., during school hours) and decide that reading blogs and my news sites is just something I save for post-bedtime, when I'm usually too done in to be creative anyway.
Besides, I have found that getting into the creative mood in the evenings--while it is certainly my preference--is not a good thing for me. I get so high on creating that it takes me forever to let it go and unwind enough to go to sleep, and that's not a good thing when I have to get up at 6:15 a.m. for the getting-ready-for-school routine.
So I shall promise myself that beginning tomorrow (why wait?), I will transition to reading my blog list and checking news sites only in the evenings (at least during the week), and the transition will be complete by the New Year.
Thanks to Reverb10 for providing the nudge to focus in on this change that I knew was needed and make it a reality!
