Monday, August 30, 2004

It Must Be an Addiction

Really. Except for chocolate, I've never really been addicted to anything. You know, when you can't think of anything else to eat or do. I never smoked, never tried drugs, rarely drink. I don't gamble, either.

So here I am, with a stack of comics to read and papers to file and a novel to write, and I'm trying to come up with something to blog about here, instead. I mean, can that be normal?

I do tend to throw myself into projects. I go on binges.

  • Crafting binges: How many boxes can I decoupage in a day?
  • Computer binges: A weekend isn't enough to learn DreamWeaver and make a website. I need the whole month.
  • Reading binges: I'm gonna finish this book tonight even if it means getting no more than an hour of sleep before I have to get up for work in the morning.
  • Sleeping binges: But it's the weekend and I don't have work tomorrow. Why do I need to get up?
  • Eating binges: But there's still a drop of milk left and more Oreos in the box!

But they don't last. They're for the moment and then, fickle Gemini that I am, I move on to something else.

I crave variety. Hey, I'm addicted to variety. But this blogging thing is something else. It's all consuming. I haven't been this obsessed since I became hyperthyroid a few years ago and spent every waking moment planning my next meal. A very expensive radioactive pill (I apparently paid its air fare from Colorado to New York City) took care of that problem, but I suspect the cure for blogging won't come that easily, or that cheaply.

And, I ask myself, do I want to be cured? I love this wacky web world. I love having a piece of it -- well, 8 pieces of it, one per blog -- and I don't want to give it up. I've staked my claim and damn it, I won't be moved.

So I blog. And given how long blogging has gone on before I knew about it, I have a lot of catching up to do. I missed blogging about some monumental moments in the past few years and I've been reluctant to write about them now. The raw emotion of 9/11 or the bizarre-ness of last year's blackout have faded into memory and nothing I say now will adequately capture those moments in time. But I think I should make note of them here. Cyber Chocolate doesn't really lend itself to the essay form, tho I have put essays there, since I didn't have this blog. Occasional Blog is for ranting and Presto Speaks! is about writing, so they aren't suitable, either.

So, from time to time, I'll take us into the not too distant past to try to relive those moments of history. I hope you'll enjoy the excursions.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:05 AM

    Hi. Random advice time! =]

    1. Lose the AOL. AOL is BAD. BAD!
    2. Don't learn DreamWeaver. Do yourself a favor, and pick up some books on HTML. If you think that it's cool to make your site look good using a program, you'll love being able to do stupid random little things like those little codes to italicize and bold the text. Heh, that's my two cents.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi, Beej,
    Thanks for visiting and for the advice. However, I've had AOL for almost 9 years and love it. I'm not dropping it. And the journals there were good training for doing a journal and for the ones I have there, they work well. The photoblogs look fine, and Cyber Chocolate works well for what it now will be -- a place I post links and answer memes and make a few random comments.

    I also love DreamWeaver. Maybe if I didn't have a fulltime job and wasn't trying to become a novelist on the side, I'd have time to learn html the right way. As it is, I spend way too much time fiddling with Blogger's templates, using trial and error to get things to work. I still haven't figure out where I need to put code to get a pic at the start of every entry. I've seen it. I've checked the source on those other blogs, but I can't make it work. Yet. I've spent close to 8 hours on it.

    My website is at least 40 pages. Without DreamWeaver, I never would have gotten it up and running in a weekend and I hope to learn more about css with it to do another big site. And I still need time to learn how to do more than resize and crop photos in PhotoShop.

    Time is precious, so I use software that makes it easier for me.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting and have a chocolicious day!