TMI

I’ve been thinking about the amount of information that streams through my fingers and head every day.

When I was a kid, local and global news had to be squeezed into a one hour block of time every evening after we ate dinner.  My dad turned on the TV, adjusted the rabbit ears and we watched as Doug Mayes and Walter Cronkite, respectfully, told us everything we needed to know.  Our choices were pretty limited.  Only one channel worked.

Still, there were evenings when I felt overwhelmed by the news, especially the national news.  I remember scenes from the Vietnam War and a barrage of information about Water Gate.  I asked my dad if Cronkite was talking about Cowan’s Ford Dam and he said no, he was talking about Nixon.  I didn’t understand.

Today, if I were so inclined (and the problem is, I am), I could read articles, tweets, books and web sites twenty four hours a day.   

Add to that the compulsion to contribute my own tweets, posts, blogs and sermons to the vast sea of information floating around out there and the problem becomes overwhelming.  Sometimes when I sit down in front of the computer screen I feel like I’m going to throw up.

And so I do.  I regurgitate the stuff that’s rattling around in my head onto that computer screen and most of the time I feel like it’s pretty worthless.  My measly little neurons firing at some topic about which others have already written volumes feels like shooting a cap gun beside a cannon.

I’m really not sure why I’m saying all this now.  Maybe I just need to admit to myself and to you guys that I’m suffering from mental fatigue.  (One or two of you – you know who you are – who are going to write a “funny” comment right now.  Go ahead.  Get it out of your system.) 

Can I be really honest?  Sometimes I walk into my office and, for the life of me, it’s all I can do to keep myself from picking up my souvenir Braves baseball bat and beating the mother board out of my computer (which would be really bad since it doesn’t belong to me).