Okay, okay.  I admit I get overwhelmed.  There’s just too much stuff to read.  I currently have 25 tabs open on my browser, afraid that I’ll forget about something that seemed so urgent when I opened the URL in the first place.  (Two decades ago that sentence would’ve been nonsense.)  I limit my time on social media.  This can be a death-kiss for a writer, but for sanity’s sake (and work’s), I look at Facebook for literally about five minutes a day.  (If you want to reach me leave a comment on my blog.)  In those five minutes (or less) I often come away with two or three articles that I want to read but don’t have time just now.  I open a tab and hope I’ll get to it before I lose interest.  There’s a lot of information.  Too much.  Too much TMI.

I’m a slow reader.  I sometimes wonder if I have borderline dyslexia—it once happened on a test and led me to phone a professor at night to explain—but dear reader, it slows me down.  And a writer, no matter how obscure, needs time.  I told a friend the other day that I don’t do things I enjoy, such as painting and drawing, because writing takes up so much time.  (And work does too—it gets the lion’s share.)  But those articles!  They look so important!  Some have health implications and, if you lose your health you have even less time.  The internet gives us TMI constantly.  And this field is riddled with rabbit holes.  Just ask the white rabbit about time.

What are the curious to do?  I actually get an insane amount of satisfaction from closing a browser tab.  It’s a sense of accomplishment—I’ve done something that brings closure!  If I do it enough times I’ll get down to the URLs I always keep open lest I forget my place.  Some of these tabs have been open since the Obama administration.  If you’re critical of such as I you might suggest “why don’t you just read an article instead of writing about not having the time to read?”  The interlocutor here is clearly not a writer.  Or at least has different writing habits than me.  There are some non-negotiables in this world of TMI.  I suppose I’m adding to the problem.  At least if anything thinks what I present here is information.  For that I defer to Klima, who, happily, still has some time.