i am no stranger to obsession, thought sometimes they run stronger than others. for the last… er… what, like 8 months? a year? almost a year… i've been singularly obsessed with politics. and not just politics, but with current events as well (though not with a broad scope). i have collected links to sites that i read on a regular basis, and in the past couple of weeks it has seemed that pretty much all i do anymore is read news sites/blogs and either store the information loosely in my buggy brain, or slip it softly into a "staging" folder in my bookmarks.

for quite some time i've used a "daily" bookmarks folder to house links to all those sites i visit (oh, this is good, you'll never guess) daily, with subfolders for sites i visit "frequently" and for the sites of "friends." before that it was just a huge dailies folder and a blogs folder.

about a week ago i finally decided to take some time and figure out what bloglines was all about. now, i've attempted to use RSS aggregators before, but never really found them to integrate well into the way i surf the web. plus there never seemed a good way to fold the results of all those RSS feeds in with each other. bloglines still doesn't integrate the feeds, but it does an adequate job of tracking entries that have been read, so that i just have to check periodically for new ones. since it's a browser-based aggregator, it's integrated into my regular browsing habits just like my daily bookmarks, but quicker (plus, i no longer have to remember–for the most part–which posts i've read and which i've not, not that it was that hard to begin with).

anyway, it seems to have streamlined my daily reading, but now i seem to have so many damned sites that i read, most of which are fairly prolific posters (or teams of posters) that all i seem to do is read.

The Daily Reads:

43 Folders
AmigaWorld
Bloglines | News
Boing Boing
Cool Tools
The Courier-Journal
Daily Kos
David Allen
Daypop Top 40
Engadget
Gizmodo
On Lisa Rein's Radar: Daily Show Clips
InfoWorld
Jabber News
Josh Rubin: Cool Hunting
LostInLouisville
Louisville, KY – Topix.net
MobileWhack
MoCoLoco
MT-Blacklist/Comment Spam Clearinghouse
Quotes of the Day
Screenhead
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Talking Points Memo
Techbargains.com

i've actually managed to do a little work tonight (answered a few emails, updated old-man.net, and written this post) but i still feel like i'm racing the clock.

part of this continual feeling of overwhelmed ineffectualness has driven me towards things like Danny O'Brien's LifeHacks, 43 folders, and especially David Allen's Getting Things Done. i am now making a concerted effort to learn the GTD concepts, and research and figure out how to apply the principles in my life, and with the tools that i like to use. i want to figure out how to make that Handspring Visor i've been neglecting a vital part of the process for me. right now, my room's a mess of discarded envelopes (and, of course, their content) and i have a bad tendency to let things sit for too long or forget them altogether until it's too late. i've gotten my finances under control because i have A SYSTEM, now it's time to get the rest of my life in some semblance of that same control. i know i have the capacity, now i hope i'm finding the methods and the tools that will let me figure the rest of it out. we'll see, but i do have a good feeling about the whole thing.

oh yeah, bush sucks, kerry rules.