Balancing the Input - I find myself often on a teeter-totter. Either, all my internet inputs are WAY too overwhelming, or they are empty and I'm checking them every few minutes, confused.


What do I mean? Internet inputs? There's the email inboxes, and I mean it plural because I compartmentalize email into different accounts. There's the email that's open by default, the one where I receive list-emails, the oddball email accounts, the spam-only account (for registering for things online, and mostly ignoring), and of course the work email. There's Facebook, with all its Notifications and Messages and postings. There are replies to my journal postings. My RSS feeds and subscriptions all go to Google Reader, where I can select what to read by various categories: My friends' journals, Interesting journals, Textiles related posts and updates, etc. Then there's all the podcasts in my iTunes subscription, syncing to my iPod. And of course, Twitter.

That's a lot of input. Visual, Textual, Audio, and some rare Video.

I need to find the happy medium of how much is just right. When all the feed-troughs are empty, I seem distracted and confused, wondering, "how did I get all caught up? why hasn't anyone written yet? ooo, look, shiny!" When I ignore all of them, I'm overwhelmed when I turn on my computer and see nearly 1000 items in my RSS feed, hundreds of emails in my list-account (most of which I'll only skim the subject line before deleting), and dozens of emails in my inbox, still waiting for my action or reply.

Just as I am working on de-cluttering the house and all my physical belongings, I need to de-clutter my internet time and my internet input, or possibly just tinker with my daily and weekly schedule so that the computer browsing time is used most efficiently.

Off to enjoy an early lunch, and continue enjoying my radio news shows from late December.

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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: Co-workers who are a joy to work with. Thank you, Paul, for being awesome.