Information overload

Five hours of my life has been wasted. In fact, probably more that - I'm sure I could work out exactly how much time I devoted to the now fruitless activity of conducting research online for a number of projects I'm doing if I bothered to think about it, but I think my frustration would just intensify, and end up manifesting itself into some kind of extreme anti-social behaviour - like growling at little old ladies who walk too slowly, or drop-kicking little toy dogs who yap at me as I walk past.

It was five hours I could've spent by going to the movies, and relaxing, then going off to a coffee shop and reading my book. It was five hours I could have devoted to changing the layout of my blog - which I've been meaning to do for the past six months now. But no, I decided to spend it trawling through an electronic database of law journals, and downloading PDF files, only to then have them all come up with data error messages when I tried to load them all up again. Pure damn fury ensued.

I'm sick of my laptop - the sheer length of time it takes to do all the research I need to do is staggering. In between downloading PDF files and then saving them to my desktop, I can perform several quick tasks - like organising the books on my bookshelf according to category and size... and I have dozens of files to find and download. Thus the five hours.

I've been neglecting my blog because I've got too much to do - I'm juggling like 4 or 5 balls at any given time, and I just don't have time to devote to writing much. That, and nothing interesting has happened recently. I've been trying to rewrite my thesis proposal for university, and I sent off a quick draft of an idea for a topic the other day to several professors and Aunty M, and received a number of different responses and reactions. All very useful, all very critical. At least it's helped me to clarify my ideas, but it has only intensified my workload exponentially. Also, I've started to develop recurring flashbacks of my interview last year in which I had to defend my thesis proposal (not thesis defence... no no... thesis proposal defence...), and in an attempt to avoid a similar not-altogether-enjoyable experience, I've started reconsidering my thesis proposal to disturbingly abstract depths...

That, combined with the research I have to do for my current job, the other extra-curricular activities I'm doing, and my natural need to read newspapers from around the world every day, I think I'm beginning to suffer from information overload. On the plus side, I'm a now an undisputed master of multi-tasking. I can write emails, rewrite my thesis proposal, listen to podcasts to learn about the history of the Rwandan holocaust and scan local newspapers for articles of possible academic relevance to cut out and put in a dedicated folder all at the same time.

And then my damn computer refuses to load the PDF files I spent five hours finding and downloading... Pure damn fury.