I’m starting to realize something truly terrifying . . Googling does not pay well.
I was raised in a family where we sacrificed grocery money to buy the World Book Encyclopedia. Some of our best evenings involved the words, “I’m not sure. Let’s get the World Book Encyclopedia and look it up.” Those red books were like magic to me, and I often just held one in my lap so I could have immediate access to amazing information. That sentence makes my childhood sound a lot more pathetic than it actually was, by the way.
Now I’ve transferred that intellectual crush to Google, a place where even more information can be found.
Unfortunately, my love for information is costing me a little thing called income. I am discovering that a day filled with Googling gives me a false sense of productivity.
If there were a method to my madness, then Google would be a fine partner. However, Google must partner with my brain which is on a permanent Red Bull status, even when my body is exhausted.
[quote button_text=”Tweet the Quote]If I kept a time-management log of the things I just HAVE to know immediately, my list would look like something straight out of a manual for Attention Deficit Disorder.[/quote] Here are just a few examples of the thought processes that have lead me to Google:- I heard a reference in a phone call to something called a marmoset, so I look it up. Apparently, it’s a tiny little monkey. I wanted to know what the TINIEST monkey might be. I Googled it and found the pygmy marmoset. Then I spent 39 seconds watching the video of one eating a noodle.
- I received a notice about a friend’s nephew’s graduation from high school. I started thinking about the march called Pomp and Circumstance. I had to know where the name originated. I looked it up and found it was from Shakespeare, like everything else. I proceeded to listen to a recording of the song which made me cry, and in my saddened state I felt a need to listen to the song “Build Me Up Buttercup” which I thought was “Fill Me Up Buttercup” and then I saw a link to the clip from “There’s Something About Mary” where everybody sang it at the end of the movie and I laughed. Again, no income.
- I suddenly wondered if there were any pictures of my father (who passed away almost 20 years ago) on Google. I entered his name and hit “images.” He was not there, but I noticed that a lot of people with our family’s last name have criminal records including murder. I proceeded to try and look up information about these relatives, and lost an hour of my time. However, I did find out the reason that I have such anger issues. It seems to run in the family.
In the time that it took me to write the messages above, I Googled three different topics. I don’t even have time to see my friends any more because I just have to know if “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was written specifically for Judy Garland and at what age she died and if her daughter Liza is dead and if not has she had any surgeries because she looks really different from her role in the movie “Arthur” played by Dudley Moore who was a great drunk much like Foster Brooks who I looked up on YouTube and watched on the Dean Martin Roast and realize he wasn’t as funny as I remembered.
Once I stepped slowly away from the roast, I remembered that I had forgotten what I was supposed to be working on in the first place.
I’m finding that Google is a lot like my high school experience with Grape Malt Duck. I want to stop. I know I am ingesting too much. But I keep going, and will chug Google until I am vomiting up useless information on innocent friends.
Do you want to know how severely I am affected by this disease? Right now I am dying to know if Grape Malt Duck still exists. I remember it all over the back of my friend’s car, and I want to know if some other teenager might be given the opportunity to be sickened by it the way I was. Now I want to Google it. But I refuse. I have to stop. I have work to do.
That does it. I am going to stop Googling and start producing, doing something useful, and making a difference in the world.