The Curiosity Bug Infection

How is it possible to have this much to say and not write it down when you have the chance? Can one burst from too many finished sentences floating around inside the brain? Will I burst? I thing I have caught the The Curiosity Bug, and it’s bugging me!

I have been trying for days to sit down by my laptop to write some of the pieces that pops into my head when I’m not by the computer. But once I sit down I find it difficult to start. And when I don’t get started right away I don’t get anything done!

It is impossible to start at once because I get sidetracked so easily by the open tabs in my browser window. I think that I’m only going to finish those I’ve already opened before I start writing… (As I’m writing this I have 15 tabs open). I will only read that article, commenting on these two posts that I’ve read already and bookmark a page so I can find it later… In the end, two hours later, I have even more tabs open and I haven’t answered the most important e-mails (with questions that needs an answer) or written a single blog post that I planned to do. I leave the computer feeling frustrated, unhappy and emptied of energy! Why do I do this to myself? Because it is my habit to do so. I need to change that habit!

I want to write about the books I’ve ordered and review those I’ve read, make the tutorials I’ve promised to give you and write about my creations and summer adventures – especially wanted to write about GTD, print design and the digital photo album that I’ve been working on, oh, and mom’s patchwork notebook cover and the button fun I had last week and… all that! well, there is so much to say and yet I procrastinate it.

I recently read an article called The Inefficiency of Being Too Curious. I recognize my own behavior in his writing:

I found I was still checking up on things like blog comments, feeds, ad revenue, sales through my games site, web traffic, watch-lists, and other stats several times per day at random intervals.

On the one hand, it’s great to have up-to-the-minute information available, but taking in that ever-changing information can become a time drain if done to excess. Some days I feel as if I’m infected by the curiosity bug, always wanting to know the very latest information for no particular reason. I’d catch myself unconsciously checking up on various information outlets far more frequently than I needed to. Perhaps this is a strange form of perfectionism.

That is so me, a compulsive clicker – though I don’t have any money coming in to check daily (unfortunately)! When I visit my blog to write a post I get sidetracked every time because there is spam comments to delete, and from there I visit the comments and read those and then I go to my e-mail to see if there is anything new… In my inbox I have some newsletter that I subscribe to and want to read, e-mail from friends, requests, answers to comments I’ve made (often only with a not very interesting “thanks for commenting”). Anyway. Getting sidetracked here…

Now I see that it is the curiosity bug I’ve gotten and I totally need to do something about it. Have you got it? I want to read too many blogs and check too many flickr groups and read too many interesting articles on too many subjects… I know I don’t need to do it, but hey, I want to!? Or do I? It’s all great information and beautiful images – but in the context of life passing so quickly and me wanting to write my own stuff I need to trickle it all through my fingers!

I bought David Allen’s book Getting things done (Få det gjort in Swedish) after I saw it at Sama’s blog last month (in July). It’s the kind of book that I want to have read as a reference – it pops up everywhere on the net and I’ve been curious about Allen’s system (GTD) for a while now. I don’t need it at work, but I thought it would be interesting to know what all the fuss is about. And boy was it interesting! I guess reading it is one of the reasons I’m noticing how not organized my online life is. Not at all! I finished reading it this morning and if I can write anything at all on the computer I’ll write about this book soon.

After my morning reading session I’ve picked up more books from Amazon at the Post Office in town. I created my Daily Art Card today from the box tag with my address from Amazon. And I also made my first “art tag” because I liked the print on it. It’s for my brother because of the big M on it! I hope he likes it. Making collage on a big tag like that was lots of fun!

I’ve have been browsing through the books today and I think I might start reading the book Happiness:  A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill by the French monk Matthieu Ricard. I read the Introduction and I’m already fascinated by this book! I’ll post a review when I’ve read it if anyone is interested?

Or I might just read something even lighter and more romantic? I bought a book by Lani Diane Rich after I listened to and discovered her through a podcast called Will write for wine that I listened to this winter. The episode I listened too where more about these two podcasting authors laughing their head off and less about writing – though it is hilarious to listen to it! Anyway, I found Lani’s website where I downloaded the first chapter of her most recent book called A Little Ray of Sunshine! You can listen too if you’re curious, click here to get the mp3! Isn’t that a smart and fun way to market your book? It got me anyway, I had to know the rest and I loooved her book!

It’s a chic lit for sure (and I love those), but the people feels more real than they do in most romance novels – and the writing made me both cry and smile! So, I might have to read my next buy right now, The Fortune Quilt! Yeah, I’m off to read it now.

And yeah, I know this is a bunch of text that I produced so don’t tell me that, it’s just not what I was supposed to do. Not what I had planned to do and certainly not the Next Action on my list! Though I don’t know yet what my Next Action should be? Maybe go to bed? But yeah, anyway. If you read all the way down here let me tell you, either you like me a lot (and I ♥ u) or you are infested with the curiosity bug, hehe! Join the club!