Dark Corners
While making a cup of coffee a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that I might write a quick blog post, and perhaps make it into bed by 10pm. While holding the kettle beneath the tap, watching the water gush, I glanced at my watch – 10:15pm. Where do the hours in the day go?
It struck me earlier that I haven't really stopped work at lunchtime for weeks. While head-down on software development work, an hour out seems like an hour wasted. I take packed lunch to work anyway, so invariably end up hunched over the keyboard, munching away, and frowning at whichever piece of code is misbehaving.
Productivity gurus would probably castigate me for not taking time out. I probably wouldn't hear them anyway – I'm pretty good at blocking out distractions when busy. My other half despairs of me – particularly as I can generally re-wind the last few words of a nearby conversation in my head and re-play them.
I've always been the same way. During my teens and twenty-something years – before family life forced me away from the computer in the evenings and at weekends – I would typically work late into the evening, or through the weekend, and then wonder why I was shaking – not having eaten for the previous 12 or 18 hours.
Given free time late in the evening when I might have read a book or watched a TV show, I typically sit alone in the junk room and jump down the Internet rabbit hole – reading blog posts, news stories, magazine articles, and a hundred other things. I sometimes seek out classic or cult movies, but invariably set out on voyages of discovery into the darker corners of the Internet.
It turns out the Internet has a lot of dark corners.