I’d forgotten how good it feels when I meet a deadline on time. The relief, the “thank God it’s over” feeling, and the warm fuzziness I get inside… This lasts until I’m hit with another deadline.

For some reason, I find it hard to work at a computer. There’s too many distractions floating around on my screen, and before I know it, I’ve wasted several hours watching videos when I should be writing transcripts. Sometimes, I’ll  deliver things hours late, sometimes even days. But whatever I am late for, it makes me feel extremely guilty. Especially if I’m supposed to be getting paid for it, and there’s no other person that can do it.

The guilt I feel when I hand in something late has become such a frequent part of my life that it had started to feel normal. Get told to do something by a certain date, miss that date completely, spend time freaking out because it’s late, finally managing to do it, and freaking out again because it doesn’t reflect well with my employers.

Today, when I actually did something on time, the feelings of happiness it gave me reminded me that the guilt I usually feel when I miss a deadline isn’t normal.

Which makes the guilt I’m going to feel tomorrow for missing another deadline all the worse.

Some people love the internet, some people hate it… I like it for the most part, but I know several people who are very anti-internet, for several long-winded reasons that would take too long to explain here. Instead of arguing with them, which I know I’d fail at – I’m rubbish at debates that don’t involve food or prizes – I decided to write a blog post instead.

One of the things I love about the internet is the ability to share my opinions online – I was always too lazy to keep a diary, and always wanted to edit what I had written. Yay for blogs! I write a blog for myself, as a record of my life. In several years time, when I’ll have hopefully have had more experiences, and generally be much *ahem* wiser, I’ll be able to look back and say “Ooh, that’s what I was like when I was younger! Why was I such an idiot?” I’m lucky in that respect. What other generation has been able to document their whole life digitally? Websites such as Plurk and Twitter also mean that I can keep track of what I was doing on a particular day, and what my thoughts and emotions were.

There is also an abundance of articles and information on the web, and this means that I no longer have to read through dusty old textbooks to find the relevant information that I need. Less time at the library means more time at home procrastinating on my next task!

Like most people, my primary use of the internet* is to talk to new people, make friends and forge relationships. The sad fact is that there will always be some people who are socially awkward, and I fall directly into that category. I trip over my words in real life, and speak without thinking (which usually means I am known as the ‘sarcastic one’, the one to avoid).
Generally, I hate public speaking, and will avoid it at all costs. But I do know how to write. Typing stuff to someone on the other side of a computer screen is easier for me because it gives me time to phrase my words.
The internet is a refuge; a place to meet and talk to people who actually know what a meme is, unlike most of the general population.

A forum post I read a few months ago stuck with me. I realised that even after I’m long gone, my comments and opinions on various websites will still be floating around the internet, hereby giving me some sort of immortality. Bwahahaha! I is living in ur internetz! Future historians will no longer have to assume what life was like in the early 21st century. They’ll know from something as simple as a Google search. I have no qualms about the internet being here in 1000 or so years, provided the earth doesn’t blow up in our faces then.

*Aside from faffing around with bits of code and wasting time playing games on social networking sites.

Somewhere along the line of when I was learning how to use a computer and eventually managing to build a website, RSS feeds became the ‘thing’.* If you owned anything that updated, you HAD to have an RSS feed in case someone wanted to follow what you were saying.
In my case, no one.**

I did try to make a go out of using it, honest! I spent ages subscribing to the blogs I liked, organising all my feeds into relevant categories, and checked them whenever they updated. But it’s just a bit disconcerting when you open Google Reader and there’s thousands and thousands of unread items. I know I could just mark everything as read, but my conscience kept on whispering to me, “you haven’t read that one yet. Or that one. Or that one. Or that little one you thought you could get away with. I saw what you did.”
I’m one of those people that can’t stand anything unread, and will always read all my emails (despite being crap at responding). Luckily, I can keep up with all my emails, but having thousands of unread items in Google Reader every day was annoying, despite me spending hours each day clearing it all. Eventually, I had had enough, and promptly removed the thing.

In retrospect, I could’ve just subscribed to blogs that updated less, but then what would be the point? The blogs I like update umpteen times a day, and I have no time to follow all their posts. Unlike some, I don’t want to know what I’ve missed, which is what my RSS reader kept trying to do. I found it a bit like a whining relative. “You haven’t read [blah]‘s post on [blah] yet! Read it or it’ll stay unread!”

This blog does have an RSS feed (but that really wasn’t my choice; it came with WordPress), and you’re welcome to follow it if you like, but if you agree with what I’ve said above, don’t. Heh. I would be honoured if you counted me as one of the people that you want to stay updated with.

I do see the virtues of RSS, as if you want to stay updated with everything a website does, and keep up with all the latest news, it’s perfect.  However, I feel that ignorance is bliss (at least when it comes to blogs). My way of keeping up to date with everything is… *le gasp* MANUALLY! I have a disarray of unorganised bookmarks of the blogs I like.*** I open them in multiple tabs every now and then to check on how they’re doing; sometimes there’s something new for me to read, sometimes there isn’t. I may miss out on some things (for example, I missed out on the chance to buy a signed xkcd book a few weeks ago), but generally, I like the feeling of surprise and delight I get when I visit someone’s blog for the first time in a few days to see that they’ve added something new that wasn’t there before.

For me, the pros balance out the cons, and I know that my old-fashioned bookmarks won’t nag at me if I don’t read them for a while. They may be old, but they still lead me to amazing stories and show me new things every day.****

*Wikipedia tells me RSS properly took off in 2005, when Microsoft adopted it. Meh.
**A quick check of my stats actually reveals there are 17 people subscribed to this feed. Erm, hello there. Stay with me, please! *clings petulantly*
*** After spending ages organising my feeds in Google Reader, I just couldn’t be bothered to do the same with my bookmarks, despite the fact that I am primarily using bookmarks these days. It’s on my To Do list, honest!

****And my strange metaphor of the day is that RSS is the nagging aunt to my bookmarks, which are the really awesome grandfathers. I’ll take the awesome grandfather any day.