A List of Apathy

I have just spent a little bit too long on the computer today. It’s not the first time, and it wasn’t completely a waste of time. I read quite a few good articles, worked on my upcoming website (about play reviews) a little bit, cleared up my emails, but mostly wasted time.

All the while I was doing this, there was at the back of my mind an urge to work on one of my ideas for this blog. What was stopping me is that I kind of felt like it would take too long, as I’d like to go spend some time off of the computer, which has become somewhat of a blessing and a curse. See, I now have the ability to get projects done that wouldn’t have been possible before. At the same time, I have the ability to kill time that could be spent on doing things much more healthy. It’s as if the gift of worldwide connection came with an added bonus of apathy toward real life.

I Need to Rethink My Priorities

I feel that ideas come to me pretty good, I have tried to simplify all of my favorite activities, and I know a lot of good tricks to improve my productivity, but I just seem to spin my wheels on the little things, when I could just as easily keep on working at it and come back to the problem area later.

I kind of wish I had an assistant to give me an added incentive to keep pushing through with projects, but at the moment, nothing I do is very profitable. I’m finding lately that when I talk or communicate with people nowadays there’s a part of me that is kind of recruiting for a possible collaborator. I don’t think that this type of thinking is selfish since I’ve put in so much time in developing my skills on the things I like to do, I feel that alone I am probably OK, but if I could only join forces with somebody that has the time to put into whatever project we might be able to produce fantastic results.

Deep inside I know that an answer will soon present itself, as it always seems to, but as funny as it sounds, whenever I write about what’s bothering me it just seems to move the process along faster.

The List

For the time being apathy has to be my friend, because there is so much I want to accomplish and if I put the time into it, as bad as I feel about denying myself some of the things that I enjoy, I’ll start to see some progress.

Here are my favorite quotes on the topic of apathy:

• Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.  Arnold J. Toynbee
• Apathy is a sort of living oblivion. Horace Greeley
• Harold Wilson is going around the country stirring up apathy. William Whitelaw
• Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is. Rollo May
• I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn. Leo Buscaglia
• Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care. Jimmy Buffett
• Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation. Conor Cruise O’Brien
• Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love. Frank Moore Colby
• Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings. Helen Keller
• Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium. Cyril Connolly
• The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison
• The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. Robert M. Hutchins
• The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. Charles de Montesquieu
• Tolerance it a tremendous virtue, but the immediate neighbors of tolerance are apathy and weakness. James Goldsmith