How do you cope?

Life Enough, enough now.

Well, no, actually there's never enough. I doesn't end ever. It just keeps going and going and going and, you get the idea, and it doesn't end and at this point will never end.

It's all become a bit overwhelming now and I don't know what to do about it.

I refer of course to everything, the everything in this case being everything. On the internet.

After years of dial-up and mobile internet with all of their relative limitations, last year, as you know, we finally received unlimited broadband internet and after years of dial-up and mobile internet with all of their relative limitations and knowing that I would, I've fallen all in my addictive personality pouring through the cracks. The devices. The services.

It's overwhelming and I've now reached the stage where I don't know what to do about it.

My Twitter legend says that I'm "Intensely interested in everything" and that's the problem. Apart from some sport, I really am. Always have been but it's now become especially acute.

Now that personality trait has come up against everything available. (Almost) everything. Whole avenues for that interest to go to. All of those films. All of that music. All of the books. Plus the infinite, infinite media. Articles, articles, articles.

That's just what's available to me right now across the various tabs I have open in Chrome, across Twitter and my RSS reader (which also happens to be gmail).

Then there are the backlogs, the hundreds of videos playlisted in Youtube, the links stored in Pocket or favourited in Twitter. Oh and whatever's been sent to Kindle. Plus all of those are part of another channel or website filled with other presumably equally interesting articles and in my mind I can see networks and trees of just stuff which all seems like it could be interesting, entertaining or educational.

All of which ignores everything in the real world I have sitting around the house waiting to be read/watched/listened to. Or broadcast on television. Or on the radio. Then available on catch-up.

I finally downloaded the Comixology app the other day. Just the free comics would take a solid week to read.

Here's another example. At the moment I've started watching my way through Alias again after having bought the boxed set in an HMV sale two years ago. I'm really enjoying it. But eight episodes in and I find myself wondering if I should be watching American Horror Story instead. Or House. Or ...

As you can imagine The Internet Archive is my intellectual and emotional Death Star.

So I have to ask...

How do you cope?

Plus on top of all this how do you find time to watch linear television? RTD's many series Cucumber, Banana and Tofu began this week. Two solid hours of programming a week for however many weeks. The reviews and word of mouth have been very good. But then I look at the pile of blu-rays I have unwatched, all of the content on the Netflix, the iPlayer, all the videos I've suggested I might "watch later" on Youtube and, well, everything else and I think do I want to? Do I need to?

Again I ask...

How do you cope?

My guess is I need to limit myself.  Try going back to my core interests.  But even core interests like Elizabethan theatre or film are endless, near infinite avenues to be pursued.  Plus its called limiting for a reason.  This Emily Gould piece about writing her first novel looks interesting, just as everything on Medium tends to look interesting.  But it's also really, really long, at least a half hour commitment.  Wouldn't that half hour be just as productively spent starting to read the introduction to the Oxford edition of Paradise Lost I was given at Christmas but is unread so far, or yesterday's long read in in The Guardian about Yakov Smirnoff or any one of the hundreds of pieces which sit unread in Pocket?

How do you cope?

I know what I potentially should do.  Scorch earth.  Delete all the bookmarks, the saved until laters, begin with a clean slate.  If I haven't read or watched or listened to something yet, I will never, it doesn't matter if I haven't seen that interview with DP/30 interview with costume designer Sandy Powell about The Young Victoria.  Or any of the many hundreds of interviews in the DP/30 channel.  But I want to.  I really, really want to.

How do you cope?

Please do tell.