When I was in the crunch of finishing several projects before my fellowship ended, I had all kinds of fantasies about the many things I would do during my partly-hoped-for, partly-fated break in employment. One of those things was a return to blogging, which I entirely neglected in said crunch.

However, oddly enough, I have less inclination to go online now in total than I used to during non-work hours (when I was already spending most of the day online). My friend put it this way, describing her experience on maternity leave: “You get inside your own bubble, and you don’t want anything to intrude on that bubble.” That includes news, phone calls, emails. I wonder if spending time online isn’t a diminishing returns phenomenon. Like you most want to spend more time online only after you’ve been online a lot (see figure).

One thing that has surprised me about unemployment so far: some things that used to seem hopelessly tedious are somewhat satisfying, such as practicing scales and reading bottom-of-the-stack, good-for-you books like “People’s History of the United States” and a macroeconomics textbook (after the financial crisis, I figured I should understand macro econ better).

Well, back to not working…