Starting July 10, 2014, I’m planning to take a personal email sabbatical.

I’m going to unsubscribe from all mailing lists and redirect all email to my personal email addresses (chesnok.com and gmail.com) to /dev/null.

I have a couple open source project addresses that will probably be redirected to people responsible for those areas during my sabbatical. The traffic on those addresses is so low, however, that this is likely not going to impact anyone significantly.

I will not be reachable via personal email until sometime around October 15, 2014.

Why I’m doing this:

I spend too much time responding to things that other people want me to do.

I have a full-time job where I do that already, and as a result, much of my personal time where I could be creative is spent in the service of others. I’m also about to have a baby! So, it seems like as good a time as any to make an explicit departure from the communication medium that’s been the focus of my life since about 1995.

I’m not sure that I will return to having a public email address outside of work.

I plan to continue blogging, although using a much simplified blogging platform that I’ve written (but haven’t deployed yet :D). I plan to continue to use Twitter, although I’ve separated public and private accounts. I do not plan to increase my use of other social media. I plan to continue to use IRC, although will likely take myself out of most project channels. I’ve removed Twitter from my phone, and plan to remove email from it in July.

I’m taking a cue from danah boyd, although not following her prescription for a lengthy advance notice to collaborators.

I spent the last six months substantially downsizing my volunteer commitments, spending more time on in-person events that are local. I am pretty sure most people won’t even notice my extended volunteer absence on the “greater internet”. I’ll trickle out some individual notices as needed, probably to anyone I’ve had more than three exchanges with in the last two or three years.