The Purge…

You know how somethings just seem so great at the beginning but turn out to be a big waste of time?

(Beyond husbands, politics and education)

It didn’t seem obvious to me when I started visiting gossip sites. I found the information intriguing, funny, rude and light. What harm could there be in adding a few to my blog favourites? It’s just harmless gossip, right?

Wrong.

I had to read three sites (TMZ.com, E-news and the Awful Truth, NY Post) at breakfast time, then after nine AM I’d start random clicking onto Lainey’s site for updates throughout the day. By noon Crazy Days and Nights would start adding posts from the West coast, and I’d visit Perez throughout the day, too. I got hooked on the Tom Cruise vs SS saga at sentenial gatekeeper (sic) and numerous other Blind Item depots. All this instead of writing proposals, one pagers or even entries. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it as a handicap. I was all about the entitlement to the information. Plus it’s free and makes me look knowledgeable (to no one else but me!)

So in honour of ‘going back to work’ day tomorrow I decided it was time to clean house, not my actual house (one vice at a time, people, all things in moderation) but this box of a house that distracts my brain.

All the gossip sites have been deleted from my blog favourites and I’m going to make a conscious effort not to visit any -ever. It shouldn’t be as difficult as quitting smoking or following a food plan but there will be withdrawal symptoms. Even though the information garnered from the sites is just passive detritus in my head I still obsessively clicked on to the sites to fill my brain. Why any of that ever mattered is beyond my comprehension. Who cares. But I didn’t even try to stop -that’s the weird part. From now on my brain will focus on work, family and staying in touch with the lives that matter most and … all the other junk I’ve let the empty reading distract me from.

Gossip will always be fabricated, my real life, not so much.