As computers and the Internet have evolved, so have the time sinks.  Today we have websites such as Facebook and MySpace and ICanHasCheezburger (If you don’t think ICanHasCheezburger is a timesink, just read the comments on a few posts).  There are many many more timesinks out ther, far too many to discuss here, and they all have the same thing in common.  They suck you in, then keep you there doing nothing for hours on end without you realizing it.

I have disconnected.

I bailed off MySpace long long ago when I realized I was going to spend more time learning to use the system than I would actually spend on MySpace after I had learned it.  I have a friend that checks ICanHasCheezburger every day, so I at least only get the good stuff that she decides to share with me from there.  (which reminds me — these two I found as I was looking up proper name spelling for ICanHasCheezburger –

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I have no idea what those Fox/kittehs are, but OMG I WANT ONE!!!!)

Anyway, where was I?  OH Yeah… ::blush:: not wasting time online in timesinks, huh?  Facebook was the latest timesink.  I got drawn into Facebook long ago, back when it first started.  It was a way to connect with some of the people I worked with online.  I bailed off it soon after and never looked back… until…

My older sister encouraged me to make a account on Facebook not very long ago.  I checked and sure enough, I already had one.  Okay, no problem. I’ll just log in occasionally through the day and keep up with the family that has now discovered Facebook.  Yeah… right.

First off, let me tell you.  When you are a full-time caregiver in the middle of a life and sanity struggle with brain numbing depression, is *not* the time to log into the internet daily and see your non-caregiver siblings chattering about heading off doing all kinds of stuff you could never stand a chance at doing.  And trust me – creating “groups” on Facebook does not really help much – they are just more timesinks that you need to learn to use before you can really sink serious time into them.

So, after thinking it over, I decided that I need to learn to recognize the timesinks and steer clear of them.  It is like navigating a starship through some kind of black hole spawning space anomaly. If you don’t keep the controls flicking lef-right-up-down-REVERSE!!! then you will be sucked into a timesink and wake up days later going “Awww hell… I didn’t get that done on time.”

There is a time and a place for such timesinks, and I envy those who have the time to sit in one place and sink into them, but I am going to have to take control of my online time and avoid such sinks if I am going to make my living online. For those who need to contact me – if you could not figure out how to contact me without Facebook or MySpace or any of those other timesinks, then you probably did not have enough interest in me to worry about it. I get semi-regular calls from Georgia and California and daily text messages on my cell phone from the Washington DC area as well as random pings on AIM from Philadelphia… if such spread out people can find me, then I think it is safe to say I am not hard to find. So… buhbye Facebook, nice wasting time with you.

Do you know of any habit forming timesinks online that are best escaped from? Leave a comment letting me know what they are and how you escaped, or plan to escape. Or why you are not going to even try escaping from the timesink.