Seriously. You can start to get it to work, and then it just takes one bad week and the whole thing is thrown off. You're stuck a week behind in your courses with tests right around the corner.
I didn't have a very good week last week. Because of it, I'm now a week behind in my online class, which means I have to do twice as much this week, which means I already have less time than normal.
I have a test this Friday. I'm not sure how ready I am, so that's not good either. Add to that the assignments that are due tomorrow and Friday.
But this isn't a complain fest for me (though sometimes that's nice). It's more of an explanation, I suppose, as to why I've pretty much disappeared recently.
Also, a little bit of a commitment. I've recently finished listening to a NPR TED talk radio hour about our online personas and the effect it has and might have in the future. It was absolutely fascinating (here's a link to the first part), and it has caused me to think a lot about how much time I spend online (and ironically enough, here I am online talking about it). I've realized that I probably spend too much time online, and, perhaps even worse, I use my time online to procrastinate doing things that actually matter, such as homework or cleaning my apartment or interacting with people in person or writing and reading and thinking.
It's actually very fascinating how I use things like social media and video games as a distraction from life. Video games and browsing social media allow a sort of escape from the stresses and realities of life. However, it's not a healthy escape because it just allows me to ignore things instead of dealing with them.
Escapes are important to have, but they can't be used as an excuse to avoid responsibilities, which is what the internet has essentially become to me. Also, it's not a very productive kind of escape. Reading, writing, running, or playing the piano are all productive kinds of escape. They encourage growth. They better us as a human being. But escaping to the internet has little more than some sort of entertainment value.
Anyways, this was just a very long way of essentially saying that over the next few weeks, I'm going to be drastically scaling back the amount of time I spend online, which I believe will ultimately help me balance my schedule. Help me get into the swing of things. Finally.