So Much All the Time

   You feel empty inside. Impatient. Like your time is being wasted. "Generation Multitask" covers it somewhat of course; it's kind of endemic. The productivity versus business debate is not something I'd really intended to get into here- I doubt I'd be able to add anything worthwhile to the conversation, and the fact that it was even in the air at all is a possibility I only just now realized. But no.

   We have such multitaskability, living when we do. The debate of attention spans is also not what I'm meaning to get into. We can afford to be choosy with how we spend our time, is what it is. (Choosing incorrectly, just browsing mindlessly and networking socially, is back to the "just feel busy" mentality that so much soothes the surface while addressing next to none of the deeper secrets of happiness, such as being genuinely productive and having purpose and, dear me, here I go off on a "productivity versus debate" tangent; getting right back on track now.)

   The internet is said to be a tool, but not a neutral one. We're influenced by these things far deeper than we realize. So it's held. But we've been anthropomorphizing computers ever since they came out- building up tales of artificially intelligent systems, something that will always be more fantasy than sci-fi. Fundamentally there's little to no difference between today's supercomputers and Jacquard's Loom. Would a loom get up and walk? But we treat computers as magic, and we're far more comfortable imbuing. Robots as we conceive them today have almost nothing to do with the soul-searching (organic!) Frankenstein's Adams first presented in RUR-- computers had nothing to do with the original vision, much like how Darwin's theories overshadowed those of Mendel at first, crowding from the market the very mechanism by which evolution could be explained. Computational capacity does not equal intelligence. A tool is a tool.

   That doesn't stop the way we use tools and think of tools from being deeply influential to how we think about the tasks for which we're using the tools in the first place, however. The realization that it's not a problem with electronic media but rather one of its virtues, that it makes information so easy to assemble and disseminate that it makes time away from the computer impractical in comparison, is one that's, very, adjective, in some way... We can afford to multitask, or more accurately microtask. Business (that is to say, busy-ness) over productivity can lead to emotional drain, and often does. We try to fill the hollow in with more business, but it's like, hormonal type things, blocking off the receptory things, making the brain feel good but preventing real good stuff from, hitting the, like, neurons...

   The feeling, anyway, happens to me all the time- I try to do productive things, and it helps, but I still think there's a guilt complex in that my lifestyle remains generally sedentary, and though I don't have the junkiest diet, I have a "diet" at all, so like I'm kind of plump, and although that's a beautiful thing when you're naked I want to look good with clothes on too... That all can be worked out, though. All those empty feelings, turns out, had root causes.

   But sometimes the feeling of dissatisfaction is just genuinely general human paranoia and meaningless guilt. Which, happens.

   Happened to me a week or so ago, that feeling- maybe more, but, that's not the important thing. I felt bleak and listless, like my day had generally been wasted. And then...

   I took a niiice bath, and my day no longer felt so empty.