Too much internet makes the baby go blind

Sometimes I feel that I spend too much time on the internet.

Wait. Let me try again.

I know I spend too much time on the internet. It's been something that I've been aware of for awhile, but didn't really hit home until I started to compile all the sites I have a fingerprint on with all of their passwords. That list is disturbingly huge. Some of those websites are "necessities", like email and my bank's website. Others are not. The "others" list is frankly a lot longer.

So I've been working on pulling back from timesucks, the biggest of which is Facebook. I can't bring myself to delete my account; it's a good way to find people I haven't connected with in awhile and occasionally get up to date. What I have done is sign out of it; the simple act of having to log back on at least prevents me from obsessively checking it like I do my email.

So of course I'm blogging about it, which could be seen as the equivalent of an alcoholic saying they have a drinking problem while taking a swig of beer, but you know it's been awhile since I was at this website specifically. So that's how I'm going to justify that. And I did just spend a week so far away from my laptop that I was only spending one hour on it a day, which is a far cry from my usual. So. More excuses to enable my habit.

Anyway, I've noticed that on long days on my computer, my mood gets lower and I feel a bit morose. I doubt that comes as a shock to anyone (in fact here and here are two articles that talk about the link between the internet and depression) and while it's up for debate on whether or not it's a matter of correlation or causation I don't think it's a bad idea to have an awareness that too much solitary time staring at a screen instead of interacting with the world can aggravate symptoms that might already be present. It's an especially good thing for me right now, as I'm in the middle of writing my thesis which requires a hell of a lot of screen time. Nothing more depressing than seeing how much time can go into writing so few pages. Yuck.

To end, I'd like to point out that in addition to a lot of screen time today, I did wander around the city (well, in a straightish line from boyfriend's apartment to my own), clean my Betta fish's tank, and have two cats that require frequent real life interaction :) My apartment is still very untidy, but it's a lot better than it used to be, so it feels peaceful even with all the dust-rabbits floating around. Should probably deal with those tomorrow though, before I disappear into them...

In which I rant about theatre

These are the front doors to the theatre where we had our strike last night. We were done at 10:30 when we thought we'd be done closer to midnight. Hooray!  I'm actually quite annoyed that they had the performance and strike yesterday, and didn't cancel. Sure, we had an audience of 40 (house seats 80), and their reasoning was that we all live a few blocks away so "we could walk to work", but seriously. There was a travel ban and the sidewalks were NOT clear. We had to walk down the center of the streets that were being plowed, and our house manager told me that he had to dive out of the way of three snowplows on his way in. Only non-essential employees were required to go into work by the University today, and as much as I love my art, I admit that theatre does not fall under the "essential" category.

For those who may not know, there's a formula in the US for how many exits a theatre or building needs per persons inside it. The space I was in required two within easy access for the seating bank configuration we were in (we have flexible seating, and some configurations require three because of how the aisles increase the distance from certain seats to our standard exits). What this photo doesn't show is that to the left of the picture are more doors to a larger hallway, that then goes to the stairs outside which are cleared of snow, however if there had been an emergency, I wonder if people would have tried to get through these doors? Technically we had the number of exits that are required, because of said hallway door, but these lobby doors are directly across from the main entrance into the theatre, and are marked as exit, and if people were in a panic? Panicked people go for the quickest straight route out (often the way they came into a space, which is why it's always good to notice a secondary exit as you enter a building that is NOT the main door). 

Anyway, everything was fine and we all made it in, but I think if we'd just been asked if we could come in without the foreknowledge that the managers had already decided that the show was happening, a few of us would have felt more empowered to say, "No". That's the danger of the phrase "the show must go on". 

 And for the record, the mangers cancelled the performances at the OTHER theatre linked to the school. But for some assholic reason we still had to perform and come it. It just doesn't make sense.

To Do lists...

How do you stay motivated?

With all the crap I'm juggling in my life, it's way too easy to punt things to the side (oh hai, thesis...). I can't be the only one though.

I adore the physical act of crossing things out on a To Do list. It's one of the big reasons I've been slow to switch to an electronic to do list. It just doesn't feel as awesome as taking a pencil and crossing something off a list.

I struggle with the starting of a task though. Starts can seem too overwhelming and monumental, despite how many little steps I may break a larger project into. You'd think "open Word Document, save as ___" (for example) wouldn't be that hard to do... but with the lures of the internet and the never-ending work related emails... it's harder than I'd think. It gets frustrating. I aspire to the kind of focus other people seem to be able to channel when they are working on a project.