News Junkie
Last night I spent at least 6 or 7 HOURS reading news. I didn't even notice... but I realized that as soon as Ana got home around 7 p.m., I started opening up links in different Moz tabs and just kept on going. Exclusively reading news. At the end, when I had read just about everything that could possibly have been said in the past week about mobile technology, I was casting about for more - opening up random Slashdot threads, doing searches on Google news, refreshing my aggregator cache every 5 minutes or so, and more.
At like 2 a.m. it dawned on me how long I had been reading news. Hours. If it wasn't for pure exhaustion, I'd have kept on going. This isn't the first time I've done this. Being obsessed with (but not actually doing much about) productivity, this of course lowered the boom of guilt on top of my head. I live by guilt. My life is one long string of happenings where I'm doing one thing when I should be doing another.
What should I be doing? Well, lots. Blogging is one. I've got lots of things I haven't written about lately that I want to get out. Working on my "big project" which has stalled in the past couple weeks as I fought with my computer then swapped it out for a new one. Answering emails is another. And I've got a long To Do list filled with both Real World issues like getting our paperwork done for Ana's Visa and an even longer to-do list for virtual activities like getting regular backups set up for my web server.
Of course this morning, instead of getting right to it, I opened up another 10 or 15 tabs and started reading again. I didn't think I was the obsessive compulsive type of person, but I'm starting to wonder.
Are you a news junkie? I mean, literally where you are spending so much time going through your aggregator and browsing news that it negatively affects other things in your life? I'm like a fucking pigeon looking for that New News Buzz over and over again... I keep hammering on that red button over and over again hoping a seed pops out of the machine. I wonder what that sensory thing is that I'm trying to duplicate is? Is it learning? Am I addicted to learning? Is that a bad thing (Yes. Any time you use the word addicted it's a bad thing). Or is it the sheer novelness - I can't wait to discover something "new"?
I'm going to be going cold turkey in about 2 minutes (after I get through these last tabs... just one more hit). I know *enough* about what I'm working on for now. There is no reason to *learn* about more news today, tomorrow or next week. I can learn how to do what I'm doing better, but no more news, do you hear me? None.
Ooh. Erik's updated...
-Russ