What happened was, I didn't get home until about 10:00, but planned on catching the end of a certain basketball game, a certain baseball game and perhaps a certain hockey game. Since I'd gotten a lot done while at work today, I was going to just check my fantasy baseball rosters, turn off the computer, watch said games, and turn in early. (Aside: I worry that I sound like I'm 80 years old when I use the phrase "the computer." Anyway.)
I ended up wasting several hours of precious, precious time tracking down ultimately useless information. I spent at least 30 mintes reading news reports about the suspension of a 19 year old minor leaguer I'd been thinking of adding to my keeper fantasy baseball team (if you don't know, you really, really, really don't care). I finally realized who Sydney Pollack was and read reviews of about 8 films from the 70s to the 90s that I not only will not see, but will probably never look at again. This led me to read reviews of several of the movies showing at Cannes this year that I will also never even think about again, and... so on. It only gets less interesting, so I'll spare the details, except to say I've noticed the following: This kind of behavior is binging. Like binge drinking or eating, only not quite as big a problem, information binging leads to the joyless, pointless consumption of information. I don't have any need for most of the information I'm chasing (seriously, one of the tabs open in my browser right now is a wikipedia page for some operetta from the mid-90s), I don't enjoy consuming it, but here I am, up too late, consuming it for its own sake. All this crap distracted me from 3 excellent games and a good night's sleep. Argh.
One nice thing result is that it did lead me to the following quote (an actress in one of the useless articles I read attributed this to Flaubert): "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." That's kind of what I've been working toward in the past few years of my life, and definitely how I plan to approach my dissertation. So there.
1 comment:
Not to pile on, but the phrase "turn in early," from you, has led in the past to stories the next day about something or other happening at 5:00 a.m., followed by pancakes. When you're lucky. I waste time, too. But luckily, I don't have anything in the world of sports competing for my attention.
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