Years ago, when I was a lifestyle writer at another newspaper, I wrote about information overload. I had a bad case of it, and I figured some readers could relate.
Words — enlightening, funny, vibrant words — surrounded me in quantities I could never hope to consume. My shelves were crammed with unread books. A slippery stack of magazines, including New Yorkers dating back to the previous presidential administration, teetered in the dining room. I kept up with the newspaper I worked for, but if I bought a Sunday New York Times I'd still be trudging through its Travel section on Thursday.
Ready for the punch line? This was before the internet.
Flash forward to the present. As of this moment, my laptop has browser tabs open to 31 different web pages.
News analyses and think pieces. Essays, some dull and others brilliant. An article debunking the "clean eating" trend. Research on the gender pay gap, including a 29-page paper by a Harvard professor. Something about adjusting workplaces to accommodate older workers. Something about hunting coyotes in urban areas. And of course, the omnipresent Facebook.
While I can't pretend that no shred of celebrity gossip or BuzzFeed quiz has ever crossed my screen, much of what I read online is interesting, important, useful or beautifully written. It's just too much.
And it gets worse. Each of these pages is sprinkled with intriguing links and eye-catching right-rail teasers — pixilated siren songs. Trying to eliminate one page, I wind up spawning five more. It's endless Whac-A-Mole.
Meanwhile, I still have too many books that lie unread or unfinished. I still have my slippery stack of New Yorkers (not the same ones).