Cleaning up online clutter

I'm back!

For those who read this on Blogspot, you may be wondering why the reordering. Sorry it took so long. But there's a reason, and part of it is because I turned 30 and took stock of my life, and part of taking stock of my life involved some vanity searching on Google.

When I really think about it, I already have too much going on. My online presence is a complete mess. Not good for obsessive-compulsive me.

And I really did think about it, and I was bitten by the streamlining bug again.

A little over eight hours a day, I'm in front of the computer, connected to the Internet. I have the following open all the time: www.dictionary.com (for work), MSN messenger (for work), YM (for the feeling of connectedness to the "outside world"), Yahoo for the news, and www.greatday.com (for the daily boost of positive energy).

In between lessons and lesson reports, I yield to the compulsion to check my three email accounts (two on Yahoo Mail, one on Gmail; it used to be four, but Hotmail has been deactivated) and my social networking accounts (I had Friendster, MySpace, Multiply, and Facebook). I also maintained two blogs, one for my Channel Surfing archives and one for my personal stuff.

And then there's Flickr, which I'd forgotten about since I reached the 200-image limit, Twitter, and all the other sites I signed up for on a whim, like some productivity sites like those owned by Basecamp.

I can't just have an account and not organize it--I can spend days just making sure it's as I want it to be. Even if I lose interest right after it's exactly as I want it to be.

So I've decided to yet again reorganize everything. I've deleted old, dead blogs (channelsurfing.blogspot.com, althear.wordpress.com) and I'm keeping two (this one, and the Multiply clone), I've disabled Facebook (sorry guys; it was just too much for me), and I've deleted MySpace as well.

I'm keeping Friendster only because of the size of my network, and Multiply because of the quality of my contacts and the ease with which I can post pictures.

It was tough to delete old blog entries from 2005, but I've somehow convinced myself that it was a record of my old life, and I have no use for it anymore now that I'm creating a new one according to what I really want. Besides, I need to cut down the time I spend online to increase the time I spend offline.

My goal is to have only two email addresses: one on Yahoo and one on Gmail. This will take a lot longer to organize (I have a lot of Yahoogroups, to begin with), but it's getting there.

Now if only offline life were as easy to manage.