keeping up with it all

i'm somewhat old-fashioned in that my to-do list is written in pencil. i keep my list in an 8.5 x 11-ish spiral notebook ( i make sure it's made with recycled paper), and each day before i settle in to work, i write my to-do list on a new page. i've been doing this for almost 3 years, so i have quite a few notebooks filled cover to cover. i can go on about how particular i can be with it, but that's a blog for another day.

for about three months now i've had "update blog" and "update web site" on my list, toward the end. i've been posting off and on - mostly off - since last spring, and my web site hasn't been updated since last august. i finally got down to it today. i even checked out my analytics for both the blog and web site, just so i have some idea if anyone's checking in (you are!).

and one thing led to another. i just spent probably 5 hours figuring out rss feeds, checking out gardening and garden retail blogs, separately the wheat from the chaff when it comes to relevance. i'm tellin' ya, there's a lot of stuff to read out there. good stuff. i'm not kidding, i could spend another 5 hours reading and surfing and surfing and reading.

i'd love to but i don't dare. oh sure, we've all wasted perfectly fine time - perfectly sunny, beach-worthy days - lost among the reeds of the web. but these rss feeds, they can waste some serious time. reminds me of the first time i ever baby sat. the little 4-year old was in bed within an hour and i had several hours left before the parents came home. video games were one of my options, and i spent the next 3 hours glued to super mario brothers. this was back in the late 80s, so there's no thought about ergonomic joy sticks. the next day, i felt as if i had a guitar string strung from wrist to elbow, and it was being plucked to no end. ouch.

i learned my lesson. i've stayed away from video games pretty much ever since. will i stay away from rss feeds? probably not. i'll just have to put down the joystick a little sooner.