I spend a lot of time explaining to people that, yes, I like music a lot, but no, I don't play music. I frequently go, "God! I wish my parents had forced me to play an instrument when I was younger!" They claimed that after making both my sisters play brass instruments and the constant battle it was getting them to do it at all, that they decided with me that they wouldn't force me to do much of anything, including useful things like "learn piano" or "learn to play guitar" or "learn to do anything that might result in better chances of getting laid, like having confidence, and knowing how to be nice to people".

This isn't even day 150 [Actually, it is day 150! -Ed], but I'm starting to feel a little inspired by this project. It's not often (ever) that I've set something up and then stuck with it past the uninspiring grind slump of however not-that-long-ago it was. I had the idea, then I sat on it for a little while constantly thinking about the best way to do it, and then BOOM I set it up all at once and look at me go! You're reading this right now, whether I know you personally or not, so in the end, I win! Yay! I win at the internet.

But, the point is, maybe I do have follow through. The last two years has done enough to slowly bolster my confidence that it seems feasible that long-term goals are worth striving for. It'll be awesome when I hit Day 365, even though updating this website has turned into a bit of a pain in my ass now that I don't have internet at home. I'm slowly weening myself off obsessively hanging out with people, especially when they're boring, so I'm getting a lot of me time at home.

Only problem is that it's really difficult to turn me time into "do something productive like read a book" instead of "sit around and stare at the walls and think about things" which has seemed to become my favorite pass time. Sometimes I get home at night and instead of going inside I just sit in my car for half an hour thinking about shit. What do I think about? Exactly what you're reading right here, except I'm not writing it down so I just think it in circles.

So I'm trying to teach myself how to manage my time better. I read through half of Masters of Doom the other night in probably the longest non-headache inducing marathon reading session I've ever done. I've always been a slow reader, even though I love to do it, and am easily daunted by huge books. So, naturally my next book I read will be the 800 page Illuminatus! Trilogy which I have been dying to read for years since I am a devout follower of the Principia Discordia fnord.

It dawned on me recently that songs played on guitar are made of these things called chords and that there are a lot of of them but most of the shit I listen to uses like, maybe five at once. Then, after watching a sixteen year old girl with braces strum away at an Against Me! song and it sounded really cool, I started to think: I'm 24! Why don't I play guitar? Goddamnit why didn't I realize this shit when I was 19? I could be a guitar player by now! What the fuck!

So I've got lots of free time, and I'm trying to prevent myself from just staring off into space. Eventually, hopefully, if I at some point decide to ween myself away from my near three year addiction to Twitter, I'll stop being so goddamn ambiently aware of the internet and dedicate my time more fully to other cooler non-internet like things. Like playing guitar. Scoring bitches. Riding dirty. Or something.

I see it this way, now, and it's hard to hold onto because I've got 13 years of straight internet addiction under my belt, but I wonder: Why did I spend so many hours of my day staring at the internet? Getting lost in Wikipedia? Is this really what we're killing print media for? Maybe there's only so much shit we need to know about, you know?

At work yesterday I got a little bored so I went to what was typically my "I'm bored, let's check shit out" bookmark: Popular twitter bookmarks on Delicious, and I opened one of the many guides on "How to best use Twitter" or whatever they are written by some blowhard media expert, and they kept talking about how you should visualize what your twitter goal is, like, "Do you want a lot of followers?" "Do you want people to find your content interesting?" and I had to close it.

Who gives a fuck! What good will "winning" at Twitter ever do you? I was happy when I hit 1,000 followers, and it was kind of work to get there, but what difference did it really make in my life? None.

I have too much time on my hands and I've been pissing it away, sitting on the internet, thinking about the internet. I've made cool friends through Twitter, so I don't want to say that part is invaluable, but what good does any of it really do me?

The internet has uses, and I need to treat it that way: updating this site, discovering new music, and work-related endeavors. Why have I spent so many years thinking it was a lifestyle? You can't win at the internet. You can, however, win at real life, by surrounding yourself with good people, good experiences, and maybe, good skills.

Next time you lose an hour or two just "surfing Wikipedia", think about all the other things you could have done instead. Hell, right now, if you sat here and read all this, do you have any idea what you'd be doing right now if the internet didn't exist?

No?

Well, maybe you should find out.