Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

It’s often hard to quantify, when it comes to recreation, the trade-off between the work or investment necessary to participate in some activity and the enjoyment (or other benefit) derived from that activity.  But once in a while it becomes obvious that something that used to be fun has simply lost its charm.

I am a member of a social web site, and for the last several months I have spent a considerable fraction of my discretionary time there.  I write short essays, or answer questions.  Sometimes my essays are serious, but usually they are essentially humorous, casual pieces.  Similarly, the answers may be serious (if the question is asked in good faith, and I have some clue how to answer it) or humorous (if the question is silly or the goal of the question is levity rather than enlightenment).  This was a lot of fun at first, because (somewhat to my surprise, given my training and profession) I am reasonably good at this.  My contributions were regarded as entertaining, witty, and generally a good read.  Besides the fun intrinsic in a creative act, who doesn’t like having their ego stroked by feedback like that?

But eventually both novelties wore off–first, the novelty that the other readers enjoyed in my writing, and later the novelty that I enjoyed by writing about different things.  I stopped getting responses to my writing, and I kept seeing the same questions over and and over and over again.

If my talent was more malleable, I suppose I could have adapted, but it isn’t, and I didn’t.  The character of the site was changing, in a direction that I didn’t want to go, and I could neither delay the change nor did I find the prospect of adapting appealing–assuming I was even able make the change.

That sounds very abstract.  Let me be more specific.  A few months ago, chances were excellent that when I was ready to log out at the end of a session, I would have at least one thing that I’d written that I’d want to share with my wife, because I thought it was good enough that she would find it amusing in some way.  I was proud of it and wanted to show it off.  The last week or so, however, I don’t think I’ve written anything worth forcing my wife to read, or anything really worth reading.  Instead, I’ve found myself becoming so bored with some of the unbearably repetitious or inane questions that I felt justified in answering them rudely, and so annoyed with some of the rude comments that I didn’t bother to address them at all.

If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s something that aggravates me.  That’s why I go to work, and that’s why they pay me for it.  At home, I want something fun.

So this morning I walked away.  My account is still there, and anyone who wants to can find me easily enough if they want to stay in touch, but I’m not going to be contributing so often–perhaps not contributing at all, unless it really starts to look like fun once more.  I probably will check in every once in a while, just to see what kind of discussion topics are floating around, but I don’t have much optimism that things are going to change very much, or very quickly.