Through The Cracks

A while back, I switched to RSS feed for collating and consuming content from my regular Internet haunts. IN fact, it probably took me longer to do so than it should have. But I will say this: checking individual websites sequentially, sometimes several times throughout the day, is a great way to pass time. And when I was in school or working in a computer lab, I had a ton of time on my hand. These days, not so much. For one, when I was at Costco I couldn’t exactly wander around the sales floor with my face buried in my smartphone. And now that I have a Real Job(tm), I actually have work to do while I’m on the clock.

Using an RSS reader, it’s especially apparent which feeds I’m reading and which ones are piling up. Luckily, I’ve kind of made my peace with that. In fact, I’ve even removed certain feeds from my reader because they’ve lain stagnant for so long. I may not always remember, but I’m trying to get used to the idea that there is no way I’m going to ever read all the content that I might be interested in.

But one place I’ve noticed this to be problematic is with webcomics, especially story-driven ones. Every once in a while a webcomic’s feed will change and I’ll stop receiving updates. Maybe the address changes, maybe the formatting goes all wonky; I don’t know. All I know is that my RSS reader has made it really simple (see what I did there?) to keep track of content, and if for whatever reason it doesn’t show up there, then it very quickly becomes a case of “out of sight, out of mind.”

And I’m kind of okay with that. My free time, for better or for worse, isn’t what it used to be. Maybe that’s part of being an adult: accepting that it’s okay to be a bit more choosy about your interests. Maybe it’s just the first inklings of the dread mortality that stalks us all. And maybe I’m being over-dramatic. But I just thought that was interesting, and since I didn’t have anything else pressing to write about, you get to bear witness to my ramblings.