Stopping the progress bar
Something needed to be done. I have become addicted to constant news, updates, the latest gadgets, upgrades, and rumors. I spend way more time reading tips and techniques for improving my photography than I actually spend photographing things. Reading tech blogs does nothing but make me crave the newest gadgets and gizmos. Most of all, I fell prey to my uncontrollable desire to move any progress bar I am given to completion. No matter how much time I spend reading stories, looking at pictures, and skimming headlines, there were always more unread items waiting. If I did actually finish, there would be more in 30 minutes or less. It never stopped. According to Google Reader, my dealer of choice, since October 11, 2006 I have read 285, 079 items. In the last month along I have read 3,599 items. Until today, I had 81 RSS feeds that I was following completely, and even that is down from a much larger number 6 months ago. But no more, I have deleted all but a very few, 3 per week at the most, feeds. Not completely ready to cut ties, I saved off by big list of feeds for now, but here’s hoping that it stays stored away.
This is in addition to a social networking “friend” purge I did a couple months ago. There too I realized I was spending completely unnecesary time being updating on the lives of people that I had had zero contact with for years, or who I had only fleeting contact with but had ended up in the perpetual internet connection. There again, I said, no more deleted 100-150 “friends” and have been all the happier since. I am not wasting the time I was before, and I am less distracted in dealing with the people I actual know and care about.
Let see what productive things I can do now.