I am an addict.

It's Sunday morning and I've been up for 45 minutes, but it feels like a lot less. You see, I've just snapped out of my "information fix," a strange, sometimes frantic hunt for news and updated blogs. This is a big problem for me (and others, I suspect) which affects both home and work life as I end up wasting an inordinate amount of time searching for the next neat idea or well-written piece. Instead of working on what is really important to me, I end up surfing from site to site, trying to take it all in. I must stop.

(Speaking of addictions, the next door neighbor just lit his morning smoke and the stench is drifting into our place. Thanks a lot, buddy.)

I realized my problem was worsening when I caught myself returning to the same blogs multiple times per day hoping that they had been updated. Maybe Hasidic Rebel has just posted a new article on his departure from chasidism! Or, maybe Steven Den Beste has posted his latest monster essay that I don't have time to read anyway! I know Tal G. hasn't posted anything in over a week, but maybe today's the day! I better check! The time wasted loading unchanged web pages started to catch up with the reading time. I think I'll call this speculative surfing.

I think I have a bit of an addictive personality. Before blogs it was computer games. When I was a kid, you couldn't pull me away from games like X-COM:UFO Defense or Civilization. I played these games and others like them to the detriment of school and friends (luckily my grades didn't really show it and my friends understood it). However, I never received more than instant gratification and always felt empty, and sometimes guilty, afterwards. The emptiness is easy to explain. After all, what had I accomplished? The guilt was most likely a combination of having used the games to procrastinate or knowing that I could have spent that time on something "better."

Today is a new day and I am determined to kick this habit. I will spend more time writing, helping my wife, reading books, updating this blog, and focusing on work.

I have more ideas about my addiction which I may tackle in future entries.