Anal wastage

As if life didn't have enough trials, I've found myself consumed with the tiny but ever-present worry that I am wasting stuff. Not to be confused with the huge and Damoclean awareness that I am wasting large chunks of LIFE in my unemployment limbo situation. Sigh.

No, what I'm talking about are... (cont)

...pissy little irrelevancies which whisper in my ear "shouldn't you be conserving water/electricity/diskspace etc.?" while I wash up, download, turn a light on et al. I have had agonies at the kitchen sink about how much hot water to use, whether to keep it running for rinsing (huge luxury and environmentally catastrophic, of course), whether to have it even switched on at the thermostat (in summer? Heaven forbid!).

Do I leave the computer on if I'm not at it? Worse still, do I leave it connected (even though I don't pay for phone time)? It's a dilemma and no mistake.

When I reply to an email, I delete any attached bits of text so that the modern interweb's vast servers won't have to deal with an extra 10k's worth of transport. And I get cross at others who don't (although, when reading various digests of mailing lists, I've been known to growl out loud at my monitor when people keep in irrelevant padding with increasingly large numbers of >>> before each line), which isn't good for muh blood pressure. Though it's still GOOD PRACTICE, okay? (/me huffs and puffs and has a calming valium)

So is it just me? I've always known I'm anal, but surely I'm not bordering on the obsessive. Am I? My theory is that it's all to do with having too much time on my hands. Either that or I've subconsciously become part of the Green militia. I don't think so.

Posted by biondino at July 18, 2002 03:28 PM