Hi, my name is Pea B. and I'm a blogaholic. This past week I've had a major slip, followed by a minor one this morning.
I've been working on a project that involves a bunch of spreadsheets and other docs and I found myself taking breaks by visiting the BT website. Last Friday, the day just got out of control, and late in the day I found myself in the bathing suit I had put on in the morning, long before my 8:55 a.m. post here, never having swum or eaten, surrounded by paper and other litter. Something about the party conventions and the nomination of Sarah Palin unleashed an interest in arguing that I haven't felt for a while, and at this moment I remember hardly any of it. I can't say what exactly got to me. Coulda been the moon phase or anxiety about weather uncertainty. In my rational moments I see the futility of these back-and-forths. Maybe it was different in the early days of BT when many more people seemed to be reading, but now it's like howling at the wind. And no one hears the howls because they're howling themselves. It's a complete waste of time. I see that.
So yesterday I took the results of my spreadsheet project to a meeting and of course discovered a rather embarrassing and obvious error AT THE MEETING. Chastening myself for mindlessly ordering my priorities, I vowed to get a grip. Maybe I could just lurk. But I didn't even plug in the computer yesterday just to be safe. After my meeting I went shopping and to the library. Got the car washed. Took the recyling. Acted normal.
This morning, however, I'm reading and recognizing the virtue of my decision not to log in, when up pops a post from JoePofKP from India, and I couldn't ignore it because after all he was agreeing with me and that doesn't happen too often (on the BT boards anyway). My response to him was the minor slip after an entire week of major slippage. Please, please, please if anyone reads this and happens to spot me or one of my sockpuppets on the BT site, please, please, please embarrass me publicly by calling me on it. Unless of course you don't dare log in either.
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5 comments:
That's me too, except I don't log in anymore. garbage in garbage out. Did you see Thursday's we say? That got my wife tied up in knots. enough so that she wrote them, we'll see.
There are very few people there that were there when it first started up. Mostly I think, because they do or write what they want, there is no citizen journalist around here.
Still I can't count how many times I've seen something stupid on BT and wanted to reply.
I will have to take a look at the "We say" but I probably don't really care what they say any more. And I don't think a lot of people do.
A couple of days ago someone got to wondering about people who have disappeared, mostly OW, but WC too, and I thought of a much longer list. It's better for me though to read people's expressions in a venue like this, and I am so glad you put this together. I miss arguing with you, but not that much :>)
I'm still hoping that my little guy will be sitting next to me, sucking his thumb, this weekend. That's the best distraction for my "problem."
Or a power outage would do it. :>)
OW left because he has had some upheavals in his personal life, and knew where his priorities lay. I left, because... well, I'm pretty damned busy here! My life has nothing to do with those folks any more. I asked to be pulled completely off of it. I don't need the aggravation of small minds and larger mouths (or people thinking that they swing a mean keyboard).
What I am doing now is far more fun - and far more productive - than anything I could ever do on the BT blogs... and it is useless to argue with them. As one of my best friends says in his tagline - "Never argue with an idiot... He'll beat you down and wear you out with experience."
Just this past week some pompous a$$ decided to take me to task on my personal blog for not explaining something. I basically told him that my blog was for social, not political commentary, and that anyone who believed that ANY blogging actually made any impression on or difference in the world s/he was sadly mistaken. People are going to believe what ever they choose and no blog will ever make a difference in that.
I stay in my world, have a fine time, and they all know me here... and those who like to bait or sneer or get rude are not worth my time, emotional effort, or strain.
Take a card from my deck, PB. Those folks neither know or care who you are, what you think, or what your experiences are - they are there to promote themselves, nothing more. You can teach them nothing.
Yeah, but...
I didn't think it was my place to say anything about anyone's reasons for not blogging. Really, if anyone is interested, it's not that hard to find out.
And my main issue is not with BT or the people who blog there or anywhere else. It's with the strange dynamic that makes me choose to do stuff that I know makes no sense. That's the stuff of addiction. Recently I came across the estimate that 8% of Americans are internet addicted. I am busy. I have better things to do than argue. What am I doing arguing?
No of course no one expects you or anyone else to explain - besides the fact that you'd have to do it over and over once you got started, most of the old folks' on there know/knew me personally and still have my email address! The people who need to know, know. Those who don't - who cares? LOL Lisa can explain it to them if she likes - or not.
An addiction? Nah - the Internet fulfills needs - and some of those needs are desperate, like the need to assault others, the need for self-promotion (to make themselves feel batter by reducing someone else), the need to teach or educate or illuminate. When you fulfill your needs in other, more basic and more productive ways, you won't have the time, energy, or inclination to teach the unteachable, assault and defuse the bullies, or burst the arrogant bubbles of the self-promoters.
What is more important - communication in a give and take environment that produces results, or endless nattering that produces nothing? You are a producer, not a layabout - once you realize in your soul that this is unproductive and a waste of your intelligence and emotions, you'll be able to walk away.
How's that for a 1600 mile intervention? Grin
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