"Politics, celebrity gossip, business headlines, tech punditry, odd news, and user-generated content. These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical. Each, in its own way, contributes to the imperative that we constantly expand our portfolio of shallow but strongly-held opinions about nearly everything. Then we’re supposed to post something about it. Somewhere." [Merlin Mann]
Amen, brother.
True story: I was in Barnes & Noble yesterday and wandered over to the area where they keep journals and notebooks. I freaked out when it appeared that they were no longer carrying Moleskine notebooks and immediately began thinking about Twittering about it! (As it turned out, they're still carrying them -- they actually upgraded to a stand-alone display case in a more prominent location with a better variety.)
[And of course it doesn't escape me that I felt compelled to respond with a "Me, too!" to Merlin's post. . . but hopefully the continuing introspection that accompanies the post will balance that out.]
There's so much stuff out there. I think Firefox, much as I love it, has made it harder for me to stop gorging on the online equivalent of junk food. FF gives me the ability to open multiple windows in tabs and restores my last open session when I launch it again. So, instead of saying, Guess I'll check my email while I eat my sandwich, I go from Gmail to Yahoo mail to my fantasy baseball team to Google Reader to Typepad to Twitter. . . and then begin the cycle again.
Since my time is limited (both in terms of leisure time in a day and the inescapable fact of mortality), I should aim for more wheat and less chaff. More time with family and friends and less time with people I will likely never meet. More reading and writing and photography and music, fewer hours mindlessly surfing online.
