inquiry

I keep wondering why I'm often so borderline panic-stricken, and it occurred to me it might be because – to use an oft used phrase – “I really don't have time for this shit”.

By that I mean I grew up in the age of one (maybe two) main local newspaper(s), a handful of TV stations, and maybe a couple dozen AM/FM radio stations. I occasionally read books and/or magazines. I went to school and/or worked. I socialized with friends. Occasional family gatherings.

And that – well, let's not forget eating and sleeping and thinking about how nice it might be to be one of the others my age actually having sex – pretty much took up all my time.

And in a lot of ways, that didn't change much for years and years.

Well, until “local BBSes”, followed by (for me) “GEnie”, followed by The Glorious Internet.

But, remember, the NOT online stuff already pretty much took up all my time.

So what happened when I was suddenly spending hours online?

Well, something(s) had to give.

And given that some things can't give, well, I started feeling borderline panic-stricken about not keeping up with everything on and off line.

And that's gone on for, oh... over 20 years....?

Thing is, I never really had enough time to truly enjoy all this for being worried I was “missing out” on whatever.

Grant it, along the way people invented cool ways of collecting possible matters of interests in various “one stop shopping” mechanisms, e.g. lists of links, RSS feeds, eventually push notifications.

BUT the volume of people participating merely turned the volume of those mechanisms up well beyond my ability to fit it and my “IRL” stuff into 24 hours.

And, so, here we are.

Do any of us really “have time for this shit”? :–)

Let's say we spend a significant amount of time on blog posts.

What gives given the length of the solar day hasn't?

I'm starting to wonder if we've been kidding ourselves all along.

I mean, maybe someday people born into significant screen time will be able to handle it.

But as for me, evolution seemingly didn't evolve this boy to the point of being able to handle it without varieties of inner consternation.

So, lemme give some examples.

This morning, while working, this'll be my third post of the day, I've received a bunch of work email, I've received four emails from people I'll be performing with Thursday, I've received a couple neighborhood related emails about issues that aren't issues to me, but I sort of don't want to get out of that loop in case something eventually comes up that I am interested in.

Then after some experimentation I concluded that an online place we use at work can create “reports”, and my manager would like for me to integrate aspects of our other systems with that data... except of COURSE the reports generate “xlsx” files (but initiating report creation can only be accomplished manually while logged in.. (see also: ARE YOU BLEEPING KIDDING ME?!??!)), and so we started hoping/dreaming their API might surface the same information.. except that it clearly doesn't for, oh, maybe ten columns of the spreadsheets created through their reporting mechanism.

And of course being able to access their “discussion board” in inquire about that requires creating yet another login/password, but also wanted way more information that I felt I wanted to provide.. so I found a “Help” mechanism that I hope doesn't represent so-called “/dev/null” in their environment....

Oooops... sorry, got a little side-tracked there.

But that's also part of my point, that something that one would think would be simple and straightforward <feel free to oooh/aaah during the reading of the next six words> In These Days Of Unprecedented Technology is going to take waiting on email from their support, probably at least a week of experimentation with their APIs, and of course my work schedule has no room for that.

<waves at his inner pangs of borderline panic-stricken>

And that's just barely scratching the surface of what I could describe pertaining to this.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in said debacle.

I dare say that between the “don't have time for this shit” aspect and the fact too great a percentage of online interactions are basically the digital equivalent of people crapping on each others' faces... what are we really accomplishing with this “web”?

Inquiring minds crying out alone in the blog-derness want to know....