Why blogs and the internet terrify me

Okay, after two invitations from a woman I admire and respect, I'll post. This is a first - it may be a long time before a second. Truth be told, I confess that I have blogged once before - 3 or 4 postings in an official capacity on a industry group blog site - but this is different.

I don't belong here, for several reasons. [Note: I fully recognize that people who don't belong in blog groups (or any other group) should not stick around telling all the other members about it. They should simply leave. (If I belonged here, I might put in a relevant link to Harrison Owen's precepts of Open Space - The Law of Two Feet.) Or as I instruct at my own conferences: Don't clean your paintbrush in someone else's drinking water.]

My response to my first invitation to fuckdecaf was simple: I don't drink coffee. This is largely so that when I do, it works. I hate *needing* something - habits that, when unsatisfied, compromise our ability to function. (I guess that's why I don't weigh much either.)

My response to the second invitation is this: Blogs and the internet terrify me. This from someone who started programming almost 30 years ago. I figure, if nothing else, you bunch will, at best, have some valuable insights, and, at worst, consider this post an odious curiosity to be ignored as you dump your mug of paint-tainted java and pour yourself a fresh one.

My terror is a combination of my present lifestyle and ingrained lack of discipline. Indeed, this blog celebrates "the drama and passion of morning coffee" (post #1) In other words, a potential ritual. No doubt most of you have several of these. {Get to the point, Andrew.} Simple - it took me 4 hours to write this, even when I switched to using Notepad in hour 2. I was constantly clicking on links. My life is almost entirely devoid of obligations. I don't work (as in produce income) more than a few days a month - I don't need to. I have no dependents and now live far from friends and family. I don't even have any cool projects (at present). So there is nothing to limit the amount of time I might spend surfing and writing, googling, surfing, clicking, writing, following links, pursuing curiosities, ad infinitum. Hell, I don't even have the discipline to go and eat when I should.

You might consider this 'freedom' enviable - that being an obviously relative term. Many people work hard to achieve this state, as did I. (Oddly enough, I never consciously pursued it - perhaps that was significant?) For me, it is disastrous. I am terrible with blank slates. Put up obstacles. Create challenges. Please. I need impossibility in order to focus and function. The internet is all possibilities. It makes my head spin. Activities that aren't self-limiting require an awful effort from me. They aren't fun at all.

The only way I survived 30 years as a programmer was to have 30 years of theatre alongside. It had everything coding didn't: people, routine, and closure. When I gave up the first world (for the most part), I also gave up it's counterpart. They were Yin and Yang, and I could not seem to enjoy one without the other. Alas, I am now swimming in a void that cannot sustain me much longer. Time to find something new.

Perhaps I can come up with something that's all the things blogging isn't - then I might be able to come back to this. I already spend far too much time in front of this bloody screen. It scares me, sometimes.

But I'll try anything twice. Perhaps I need this in order to be pushed to find the Yang. Hmmm... Now there's a thought.

Time to go adjust the joist posts in my basement - another blank slate {aargh}.