Wonderosity

I just realized that I’ve rarely been using this blog in two primary ways that I originally intended -to share my tech struggles (SkepTech entries) and to log my geeky explorations. As you might guess, the two of those topics are highly correlated. The net is mind-bogglingly massive and the new and frequently cool sites, services, mash-ups, free applications, etc seem to be growing at an exponential rate. Its a friggin black-hole for those of who are fascinated with information, ideas, and communication! My wife has helped me to see that its this ‘explore new stuff’ factor in my life that can really become a time suck. I most often find myself exploring, researching, testing, and playing with the following:

• new social media and social networking tools/services/sites. Lately reality all starz took a good 10 hours of my time…
• web 2.0 mash-ups (beware this dangerous feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/programmableweb/mashup)
• new virtual worlds (the emerging ‘multiverse’)
• serious games (though I don’t like this name, it has come to mean games that have some sort of real-life implications)
• blog tools and gizmos

I think what I need to do is to schedule a certain chunk of time a week for this kind of activity. Though I could barely skim the surface of all that is happening in this amount of time (until I decide that I’d want to take things in a professional direction (ie get paid for the time I am ‘wasting’)), it needs to be short -like 2-3 hours a week. As much as I seem to like this kind of geeking (I do, don’t I?), I just can’t justify spending more time. Spending more time means spending less time on my other main interest of late: social media / new media journalism (podcasting, etc). Or it means taking time away from specific learning goals I have, stealing time from family, from things I need to do, from being healthy, from healthy social relationships,etc…all those other dimensions of life that never quite seem to fit together.

So there. Anyone else struggle the same, or have any suggestions? I know I’m not alone in this struggle, how they hell do others find the time for it without it adversely affecting their lives?

Tags: screen addiction, skeptech, wonderosity, geekingoutloud, tech struggles, realityallstarz, multiverse, web 2.0, mash-ups