User blog:Edwin Shade/A "Brief" Hiatus

For many years now, I have prided my self on not having a smart phone, tablet, or other handheld electronic gadget that I can call my own, as I have always preferred face-to-face interaction, the more healthy way to communicate, (not that I am against social media, it is just that I feel social media's purpose is to connect with friends who live far away, not someone you could visit after a five-minute walk). For the past year and a half though, an honest introspection has revealed my computer use has been excessive, and a Fermi estimate of the time I have wasted online would be approximately 150 days. 150 days out of a year and a half is far too large a portion of wasted time to be a reflection of a productive life, and I recognize it's time for a change. Then again, I have thought there needed to be a change months ago, but my goal to use the computer minimally has never truly come to lasting fruition. On a conscious-subconscious level I have adopted the words oft attributed to Mark Twain: "Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.", and it has caused problems in my life, namely that I have schoolwork I need to catch up to, and I have been going to bed too late.

Any more procrastination on my part would be inexcusable. So from this day thenceforth I will always keep computer use in strict subjugation to other activities, especially those which involve a pencil and paper, and I will seek out more face-to-face association with others. In harmony with this resolution, I will be absent from this site for a week and a half, very possibly longer, and even when I return I will be less active on the site. Every here and then I may formulate something I feel is worth sharing to the community, but I will no longer feel I have to be the most active member in order to be considered a 'good' Googologist, nor will I feel pressured to make blog posts that appear so often on the hot blog posts list, etc. A day has arrived for progress, for learning, and for time well spent.

With that, may you all take a look at yourself like I did, and try to do the things most worthwhile, if you don't, you will regret it later on. So goodbye, for now at least !

--Edwin Shade (talk) 15:30, December 23, 2017 (UTC)

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. ~ Andrew Brown

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. ~ John von Neumann (attributed)