I can scarcely believe it: my Google Reader feed now has only THREE unread items in it now (and one of them is my own Propagational Library installment from yesterday, so even that unread is provisionally not in quotation marks). It’s taken me a month to clear the backlog.
Granted, in order to get to this quasi-virginal state I had to completely drop subscriptions to a bunch of fascinating-but-way-too-frequent-to-read-religiously feeds (I’m looking at you, Brain Pickings), and also do blanket “mark all as read” clearings of certain other stacks that I just couldn’t bear to cancel (hello, My Old Kentucky Blog and Bad Astronomer!).
And granted, I still owe comments on some recent posts by, like, actual friends (hang on, Suburban Soliloquy!).
And granted even furthermore, dry desert winds blow through some of my favorite bloggish haunts, which I hope are not actually ghost towns despite the piles of tumbleweeds blocking entry to the saloon (hellooooo, Mature Landscaping???).
Still, it feels good.
(But damn — what if I missed something important?!? Better go switch the Reader view to All (rather than merely Unread) Items so I can check…)
marta says
I don’t even look at my google reader because the number would traumatize me. Glad you’re still here though.
John says
You’re right. Google Reader (or any other feed reader) is a wonderful convenience. But like you, I wish there were a way to somehow mute the actual numbers.
Glad you’re still around, too. In the years I’ve been following you, the last few months seem to have been the ones most likely to knock you offline indefinitely. That they haven’t says, well, something!
Jayne says
Oh boy, I’m where you were before May 20th. (And thanks for visiting SS–your presence did not go unnoticed!)
How does Brain Pickings do it? She’s not reading blogs. She can’t be reading blogs. Although, she does have a little help over there.
Speaking of missing something important, I’ve some fiction to catch up on here at RAMH, but first I’ve got to pick up the little sprite from her school luau. It’s been one big party this week, and they still have two weeks to go before the zoo lets out. I wonder if Ms. Popova would be willing to share her help? (License required.)
John says
In some ways, I really, I mean desperately want Maria Popova’s job. (As far as I can tell, that job IS Brain Pickings, although the About page there says that she “also writes for Wired UK and The Atlantic, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.”)
But then I think, well, there’s so much other stuff I want to do, too. I mean, I don’t even have time to READ Brain Pickings, much less WRITE it, and I don’t think magically doing away with my day job would change that. :)