Is This Anything? 27
Is This Anything? was a long running series I did on this blog, and I guess I'm now reviving. It's named after the thing standup comics say when testing out new, rough material. Arguably most of the blog is already that, but this is even more so.
I have what's best described as a destructive but passionate on-again-off-again relationship with Twitter. A lot of people like to talk about Twitter as a "hellsite" that they hate (but keep using?) and I'm like: no, my problem is exactly that I love going on Twitter, it hacks my brain and is bad for me, but I obviously love being there.
I'm currently in yet-another attempt to get away from it by using a site-blocking extension which allows you to set rules like "do not let me on this site more than 10 mins out of every 30" or whatever. Unfortunately, it turns out "10 mins out of every 30" is not a good rule for me: it somehow makes the behaviour more addictive, I guess because it has this kind of intermittent variable rewards property where sometimes I log on and I'm allowed to read it, and sometimes I log on and I'm not, and sometimes the site blocks while I'm using it, but I also know it's only ~20 mins till I can get back on. This is all really bad honestly, and while I haven't tracked this accurately at all I worry it's making me use Twitter more on net than I was before. Can anybody help, please?
Most airport restaurants (famously) suck, but Atlanta airport has bizarrely many 4.9* rated outlets, include multiple reviews saying (approximately) "this restaurant would be great anywhere, to find it in an airport is basically a miracle." I'm planning to investigate this but if any of you know the reason already please tell me why.
[in other words: what's the deal with airport food?]
When is it true or not that the hardest part is getting started, so just do SOMETHING to get the ball rolling? I sometimes want to suggest that people who are procrastinating/avoiding something take literally any action in a relevant direction, because doing anything will get you started and you can go from there. But I'm not sure this is true in general, sometimes you're avoiding/procrastinating for good reason (as I have learned the hard way), and so taking a random action might not be a good idea. E.g. someone has been deliberating for a while between different career paths and as a result is not getting anywhere, part of me wants to say ok let me help you put in a job application, what's the easiest application we can do?, it doesn't matter which because you just need to get that ball rolling. But I'm not sure that's always true, or how you'd predict when it is/isn't true.
Sometimes when people talk at me I find myself thinking – I'm sorry – either you think I'm stupid or you are stupid. Do any of you have this experience? Is there any way to figure out which?