Computer Chaos
The internet is a wonderful thing. When I am writing, I use it to research factual questions that crop up as I develop a story, or if I need a name for a character I’ll ask Google for suggestions, or I’ll check the online Thesaurus to find just the right word. Unfortunately, the Internet can also sidetrack me–with Facebook, Youtube, interesting articles; sometimes I go online to look something up, get distracted by something else and forget completely why I went online in the first place!
Having so much information literally at our fingertips is amazing, but it can be overwhelming. Who has time to read everything on the Internet that is relevant to them? Often I’ll bookmark a link or download an article for later perusal. But what this creates for me is computer chaos.
I am a neat freak. I always have been. The compulsive tendency to organize, clean up, and put everything in its place has been a part of who I am my whole life. And now I not only have a house and desk to keep in order; I have a laptop that’s a mess. It is filled with documents containing articles I haven’t read, emails that need answering, photos that need sorting, files that need organizing…my bookmarks list is so long it takes several minutes to scroll down it. I get antsy when I begin to think about the time it would take to sift through everything and decide what to do with it. So I task-avoid, and just keep adding to the jumble of information, which unsettles me even more. Argh! How do I get out of this computer chaos and get on with writing?
