Friday, December 18, 2009

Is your laptop overloaded?

According to an article I read recently:

The wealth of media in modern life means the average person is bombarded with enough information every day to overload a laptop computer, a study has found.
Yes, I am feeling that bombardment! Being in my home country for a short visit I am playing catch up with a lot of people. When you don’t see people very often you have a lot to catch up on. And so you are taking in all the latest on what people are up to, their kids, their jobs, spouses, health, hobbies, etc.

Plus there is a lot going on right now politically that even Congress seems unable to keep up with (and it is their full time job!)

Advertising in this country bombards from all directions. Even people like me that try to avoid TV still find our mailboxes loaded with ads. Everything you buy from groceries to electronics comes complete with more coupons and ads trying to get you to buy even more.

As I near the end of my time here I am starting to think about the details of packing and departure. With email and cell phones you are only a text away from issues and events on the other side of the globe. A recent email regarding future visa options has sent me scrambling to collect and “authenticate” some documents.

And I did notice that it is Christmas season which adds a certain amount of time constraint to finish certain things before the holidays.

So I do feel somewhat fragmented and distracted as I think about details of packing and shipping, work plans for the next few months, national and international trends and crises, visa stuff, and whether I should even bother trying to do Christmas cards or just make it New Years’ cards, and Christmas preparations. All of that interspersed with thoughts of the people I wanted to see, books I had wanted to read, events back in the second and third of my worlds, etc.

My “laptop” does sometimes feel like it’s overloaded!

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