wasting time? (was Re: sew my lips shut and tie my hands closed,NOT)

[Guest guest]

At 11:23 AM 6/9/03 -0700, AndyTiedye wrote:

>

>> I also often wish I did not get on the net every day and communicate

>> directly with people. It takes up too much of my day that I could be

>> using to do the things I really want to be doing. I want to write, but

>> I don't want to necessarily write to mailing lists and newsgroups all

>> the time. Right now, there is a large writing project that I truly want

>> to be doing, but I can't wrench myself away from the email program.

>

>I do not consider time spent on these lists to be wasted. Many of the

>posts here, including yours, have prompted a great deal of self-examination.

>We are learning more about each other and ourselves. Some of what

>we are learning is beyond the state of understanding of autism among the

> " professionals " .

There's a difference between " wasted time " and " time spent doing one thing

when one really wants to do another. "

I don't consider my time on mailing lists to be " wasted time " but I do feel

that there are times when my obsession with reading every mail on every

list I'm subscribed to (and, at times, the number of lists I'm subscribed

to can be quite large) limits me from doing other things I want to be

doing. There are only so many hours in a day and I can't do everything so I

have to choose.

Yesterday I intentionally limited myself on e-mail using timers and an

inordinate amount of will power. As a result, today I have a clean kitchen,

am 90% done with the twelve-page translation I'm doing for an organization

and have an outline for the essay I've promised an editor.

On days when I just let my e-mail obsession get the better of me, I do

nothing but e-mail. While there are potentially times that the things I say

in e-mail help others and the things I read in e-mail help me, I'm one of

the type of person who eventually gets depressed when I realize that a

month has gone by and I have produced nothing concrete - no essays, no

stories, nothing cleaned or mended or washed, nothing translated, nothing

composed, nothing drawn, nothing designed and sewn, etc.

E-mail easily takes over my life and I don't like that. It's not that I

consider e-mail a waste of time, just that I don't want to spend my life

doing only one thing. The dilemma gets very sharp horns when I'm in the

middle of highly emotional e-mail conflict and then not only am I doing

nothing but e-mail but what I'm doing is degenerating my health. Even when

thing are going smoothly, however, I find myself overwhelmed by my own

obsession and struggling to find a way out of it so that I can do the many

other things I also want to do with my life.

And now I am going to go take a shower and run some errands.

Sparrow