Thursday, January 10, 2008

Is the internet slowing down/thinning out, or is it just me?

I used to be able to procrastinate for hours with blogs and facebook, but it seems that when I am in need of some distraction, those sources are empty. It was once the case that I would have needed to visit facebook every quarter hour to keep on top of all the 'news'; now, half a day can go by and there still won't be anything new to update me on.
There are two possibilities: 1) that I have become hyper-efficient at checking everything so that it just seems like things are thinning out. or 2)People are actually being less active on the internet.
I think it is both. I am terribly efficient. I have my homepage set to Bloglines - a blog feed organizer that tells me when people have or haven't updated their blogs - this way I only have to load the pages of those who have updated. Before this, I regularly visited about 13 blogs a day. That still didn't take much time, as I would recognize that there was no change.
It could be that there is a lull in people's activity online - I have noticed that I'm getting fewer and fewer emails, more junk mail, but less actual email.
Most importantly, people have almost completely stopped commenting, except for my absolute favourite reader who comments SO regularly, she is also one of the few consistently updated blogs which I frequent - Thanks Mai!!!

Ok, now some posting with substance. Over the last few days, there's been a change. I've had some kind of writer's block for over a month, I think it was building over all of last term. Anyway, last night and today, I've been writing lots. It's not excessively nor simply pouring out of me, but it has a flow that I've been missing. I'm glad to have it back. I'm also interested to see if things have changed in other areas: For quite a while, improvising has been bland, if existent at all; also, I have not been emotionally moved by music in quite a while. Long story short, with all the symptoms I've listed in some form or another, I think I'm coming out of some sort of mild depression. I don't want to jinx this refound creative outburst, so I'll just say that I feel that things are on an upswing right now!
And what perfect timing...

2 comments:

Mai said...

Tadaaaa-----h!!
I could finally comment! is my comment showing up? I've been having difficulty with commenting sometime with blogger... all my friends complains about it. Did you know that blogger is been blocked in some countries? My parents can't access my blog when they are in China at all!
maybe those 2 reasons are why people stop commenting....

But thanks for mentioning me! I feel special now:)

I do feel the exact same way about emails. I haven't got a single email from my Canada friends in a loooong time. They think it's my fault for not being updated on FB. Oh what a heck?! Even if there was FB, I still appreciate friendly (and personal) 'hello!' from friends.... like most of my Japanese friends still email me occasionaly, but NONE from Canada!!!!! aaarrrg.

I think you and one other girl was the only people from CND who said "merry christmas & happy new year" to me this year. that's sad!!!! Oh, and you & jon's friend Kyle too.

anyways, Cheer up Michael!

Jonathan Evans said...

No one ever emails me either. I blame society.