I've decided to re-adjust my priorities. I'm beginning to wonder if spending so much time on the computer and the Internet is impairing my sleep schedule. Not only because I stay up late at night reading stuff, but because your body configures its sleep schedule based on light input, and looking at a monitor for long periods of time gives your body way more light than it's meant to get, which disturbs your body's normal sleep cycle. This may be junk science (let me know if it is), but it's consistent with my understanding of how your body regulates its sleep schedule.
Plus, I don't read anywhere near as much as I used to. Part of it I blame school for. Whereas I'd normally read, during a semester if I'd read anything besides what I have to read for school I think "I should be reading for school". So, rather than reading for school, which I usually don't want to do at the time -- partly because stuff about the philosophy of mind, existentialism, or what have you is too heavy to read while going to bed, and partly because I feel like it's a burden, like I'm forced to read the stuff, so I don't want to read it -- I wind up staying on the computer.
Besides that, given all the neat sites on my blogroll and now with link farms like del.icio.us I'm winding up with so much stuff to read, but so little of it is actually of real lasting consequence.
So, I've decided to cut back on my computer usage. I'm going to try to actually get to bed at a reasonable hour (though not tonight obviously, though I only first got home at midnight). I hope if I stop looking at a computer monitor so much, my sleep schedule will be able to re-adjust itself, and as a consequence, I may even get to read more (not only because I'll have more time, but because I'll have more energy as well).
We'll see how well it works. I haven't been blogging all that much anyway, so it won't be obvious from my frequency of posting. Though in fact I may wind up posting more since I'll have more time to read and think 
I'm going to try to keep my computer usage per day down to:
- Checking e-mail (once)
- Reading a few choice web sites to get my news:
We'll see how this works out.
Update: Steven Den Beste has had similar feelings of burnout. I feel like there's not much more I can say about things that I haven't already said. The Iraq war went so well and is continuing to go so well, and we've learned so much as a result of it, that I don't even feel like there's anything to argue for anymore. So no warblogging for me. I could argue about how Bush's "AWOL" charge is bogus, just like every other scandal people have tried and failed to pin on the President so far, but any rational person should be able to recognize that. I've said much of what I can say about evolution, though I do have a long post coming that I have now in draft form which I need to do a little more research for. I'm not working or I'd probably have more neat programming things to blog about, and I'm even completely stalled on my Python CMS project because of lack of time, motivation, and energy. And something I'd very much like to be working on, release code for, and write a bunch about, I'm waiting on the spec for before I finish up the work on it. I can't wait until that's done with... though, once it's "done", I'll still have lots more work to do on top of it (though, that I'm looking forward to, because it's the cool "Let's build a whole bunch of cool stuff on top of that base we just built" kind of work.)
Anyway, sorry to be rambly.
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Permalink
I fully support this reshuffling of priorities, brother -- I think you've been behind the magic glowing box one too many hours a days for the past few years. Injecting a little physical activity into your new schedule might help with the energy/sleep problems, too.