Distraction
I found this, with a little irony, in one of my email inboxes this morning : Why can't we read any more?
It doesn't say anything new, of course, but it encapsulates a problem I've had, and so have you probably. Email. Usenet. Web based forums. Lj. Twitter. Facebook. I have got a great deal out of all of it, of course, and have learned a great deal. But I have also spent way too much of my time sucked into things that don't matter, getting cross about things I can't change and focussing on things that don't leave me feeling I've achieved much.
The only thing I can't agree with in that blog is that it presents books as an alternative to this, and I don't honestly think they are. Books for me are subject to exactly the same addictive behaviour. I can remember my parents in the 70's talking about the guilty pleasure of 'committing book' - ie getting sunk into a book when you should really be getting on with something else.( Collapse )
It doesn't say anything new, of course, but it encapsulates a problem I've had, and so have you probably. Email. Usenet. Web based forums. Lj. Twitter. Facebook. I have got a great deal out of all of it, of course, and have learned a great deal. But I have also spent way too much of my time sucked into things that don't matter, getting cross about things I can't change and focussing on things that don't leave me feeling I've achieved much.
The only thing I can't agree with in that blog is that it presents books as an alternative to this, and I don't honestly think they are. Books for me are subject to exactly the same addictive behaviour. I can remember my parents in the 70's talking about the guilty pleasure of 'committing book' - ie getting sunk into a book when you should really be getting on with something else.( Collapse )
