It happens to many of us. It's probably already happened to you, and I'm behind. So maybe I'm just joining the party.
I have a very serendipitous nature. Since my early teens, at least, I've been known to grab a dictionary to look up a word, and an hour later still be poring over it. By that point, I've usually forgotten why I started looking in the dictionary to begin with.
I also have wide interests, including many mundane things. Including many subjects I didn't realize I was interested in, but only because I hadn't stumbled across them yet. I'm not a history buff at all, but a couple of years after I first met my wife, who's British, I had picked up a book from the library on the history of British monarchy. My sister-in-law, who is British also, being my wife's sister, commented at the time that I read the oddest things. Guilty as charged. But it interested me.
So, when I seriously started reading blogs, you can see how I was predisposed to getting sucked into the vortex of links.
It's probably worthy of mention how this actually happened. I had been reading blogs every so often for a couple of years, but I hadn't run into any that truly held my interest. I had signed up with Blogger, pointing it to one of my web sites, and dabbled around a bit, but it was truly a plaything that I toyed with on rare occasions. Then one day I was googling for something regarding my local school system, the Loudoun County Public Schools. One of the top items that appeared was an old post from Kevin Aylward's blog, Wizbang. Kevin had been a supporter of one of the Republicans vying for the Potomac District seat last year, and attended the convention to vote for John Andrews. Coincidentally, I also participated in the convention to vote for my good friend, Bruce Tulloch. Kevin posted the results of the convention: Bruce beat John by one vote, because John forgot to register as a delegate (doh!).
Anyway, it was obvious that Kevin lived in the same area as I do, and his blog interested me, so I became a frequent visitor. In line with my serendipitous leanings, I followed many of his links, leading me, either directly or indirectly, to James Joyner, Donald Sensing, Kate McMillan, Dean and Rosemary Esmay, Meryl Yourish, and many more (see my Blog links in the left pane). I was starting to realize that work was so inconvenient, because it inhibited me from staying up-to-the-minute with my favorite blogs. Then I started losing sleep, because I couldn't tear myself away from the computer at night, because...well, you know.
To make matters worse, I realized that I could get news feeds into my aggregator, so now there was even more stuff to read. On and on and on it went, squeezing everything else out of my life. I should note that this didn't sit too well with the wife and kids.
Well, rather than the "big event" that usually happens about this point in similar tales, I just kinda shook myself and realized that I couldn't just go and follow every little thing that evokes mild interest. I've got to scan descriptions, or even just titles, and decide to let some of them go. It pains me, because I know I'm going to miss some neat stuff, but I've got to wrestle my life back from the blogs.
But the beast is still in me. I'm still a blogaholic, and expect ever to remain so. But hopefully I can exercise enough control to "just have one," so to speak.
Yeah, right.
