Do you believe there’s such a thing as an addiction to the Web? Personally, it’s the kind of nonsense I discount as pop-psych woo-woo. These folks, for example, claim Internet addiction is “a growing epidemic,” pretty alarming considering the whole concept stems from a satire. Dubious as the idea seems, sometimes I wonder. There’s no question I’m spending way too much time blogging and way too little time living real life.
It can’t all be blamed on blogging. About 99 percent of my work is done online, whether it’s editing or teaching. Last night I worked until 12:30 a.m. trying to finish the course prep for the English 101 class that starts next month. Got to bed around 1:00 and then, naturally, awoke at 5:30.
I’m getting fat because I’m not getting enough exercise, and I’m not getting enough exercise because I’m parked in front of the computer from dawn until the middle of the night. Day after day after day. To some extent that’s abetted by the heat: it’s just too darned hot to go out trotting around the park or the desert. But the truth is, this was going on a long time before summer arrived.
Normally I stumble into the office and start blogging the minute I roll out of the sack. This means starting some time between 3:30 and 5:30 a.m. Write from one to three hours. Then get up, feed the dog, feed myself, in summertime water the outdoor potted plants. Then it’s right straight back to the computer for editing, teaching tasks, Internet cruising, or more blogging. Stuck there till around 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. Get up, grab a snack, sit back down in front of the computer. Come 8:00 or so, realize the dog hasn’t eaten. Feed the dog. Maybe grab another snack; rarely fix a real dinner. Back to the computer until I can’t hold my eyes open, a state that usually occurs around 10:00 or 11:00 p.m. Sometimes when I get up I’m so stiff from having sat in one position for so long, I can barely walk.
Socializing with my friend KJG for a day and a half, I learned that she spends most of her at-home time on her feet. Her house is spotless and her acre of land is immaculate because she’s busy attending to it. My house—the parts you can see around the clutter—is awash in dust and dog-hair dunes because I’m too preoccupied with the computer to clean, and my yard is overgrown and tired-looking because I never bother to trim the plants and my idea of weeding is dribbling a few drops of Round-up here and there.
This. has. gotta. stop.
As I reflected a while back, too much of my supposedly entrepreneurial time is being spent on highly unprofitable endeavors. The teaching makes the most consistent return on time invested, but it’s not returning much. Blogging? Today I made $3 and change; that works out to about a dollar an hour. Editing pays $30 to $60 an hour, but only when there’s some work coming in, which just now is not the case because I’ve been too busy sitting in front of the computer to market myself.
This morning I decided to get up and do something instead of padding into the office. Even though the four-hour nap (these cannot be called “a night’s sleep”) left me struggling to keep my eyes open, I started in on the neglected yardwork. Repotted the long-suffering hibiscus and lashed it to a standpipe so it won’t blow over in the next monsoon wind. Dragged a bunch of pots whose plants have fried in the heat back to the yard-gear storage. Dragged the hose to various plants. Stuck a number of succulent cuttings into the pockets of the murderous giant strawberry pot, probably to be pulled out soon by The Yanker, a curved-bill thrasher with a fetish for small, juicy plants. Washed down the deck, after a fashion.
Then it was back to work on the 101 class, whose “couple” of remaining small tasks expanded to fill all available space. Midafternoon, I fell asleep on the sofa and stayed out till 5:30. Back to the computer; remembered to feed the dog around 8:30. Finally finished—finished!—the course prep and got the entire, endlessly time-consuming BlackBoard lash-up ready to go.
So it is that I write this at 11:19 p.m.
It’s time to consider whether this blog should continue at all, and if so, in what form. Next semester is going to be hectic. Each of my classes is just eight weeks long, and so students will be turning in stuff in every class meeting. Even if I succeed in controlling the time spent reading student papers—which you can be sure I will not—the schedule does not lend itself to spending two, three, or more hours a day writing and cruising the Web.
One option is to demonetize the site, so it no longer feels like a job, and so it doesn’t really matter much whether something gets posted every day.
Another is to change my work habits so as to spend evenings sitting in a more comfortable chair in front of the TV and writing on a laptop, instead of in a bone-crushing desk chair in front of a desktop. This is how Funny started: it was an idle hobby to cut the boredom of the awful, violent and mind-numbing fodder that is prime-time television. After shifting the blog-writing time to early morning, I stopped watching television altogether (because I’m now working into the night, every evening).
And a third is to stop blogging altogether.
I’d be sorry to do that. Funny about Money has become part of my life (obviously) and part of my identity. But I’ve got to get up from in front of the computer. If I can’t find a way to do that in the very near future, some major changes will have to take place.
What do you do to keep this occupation, such as it is, from becoming a preoccupation?
