Obsess Much?

I realized a personal truth yesterday. I am very much into instant gratification. I know, who isn't, right? But, until yesterday, I had never realized how strong that urge is within me.

After I announced the contest yesterday, sent out the email and blogged about it here, I couldn't help myself as I sat literally for hours refreshing my statcounter page. I had to see where people were coming from, which pages they were looking at, how many pages the loaded per visit, how much time they spent on the site and if they looked at just the contest page (by which I was trying to judge if they had some interest) or if they looked at the contest page, the news page and the rules page (which I took to mean they had a lot of interest.) It was exciting watching the hit totals rack up faster than they ever had before. Each time I refreshed and saw the numbers jump up, it was a little burst of energy and excitement. I was hooked.

By midday, I had to leave my computer screen and get out of the house. My rationale was that I wasn't getting any work done anyway and I was beginning to scare myself. So, I went to the comic shop, which I haven't been to in a while, and tried to distract myself, even if for only a few hours.

It worked for the most part. I was able to get my mind off of it and realize how obsessed I had become. When I got back, I tried to focus my mind on doing other things for the rest of the day, and I only periodically checked how things were going. Though, I will admit, I was up late last night going through all of the stats one last time before bed.

Today, I have sworn to myself that I will not look at the numbers for the rest of the day. I am sure they will go up and will be good, based on yesterday (which I will share with you eventually once the numbers for the week are in.) So, to some extent I can relax.

As I was telling Al, I need to remind myself that this contest will be what it will be. Further, I need to remember that the contest is more than a month long, and I should neither get my hopes up based on a few good days, nor expend all my energy at once. This is just the beginning. Hopefully.

So, now that I have learned this about myself, how will it affect me? I am not sure. I should probably recognize that it's going to happen on days like yesterday, where I am launching something new, and plan for it accordingly. Maybe I can schedule a meeting out of the office or give myself so much work that I don't have time to obsess. Or, I could just accept it about myself and realize that I will have to tear myself away from my computer from time to time. Either way, I don't think this is the worse thing for me. It's just more of a realization than anything else.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

-- Tao Te Ching