How far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?

For me, a card-carrying ENFP, the inherent challenge of academia is always: how far down the rabbit hole do you wanna go?

I mean, I get sidetracked easily at the best of times. Most of you have, at one time or other, received some dumbass email containing a link to a goofy animation somewhere on the interweb and know this already; the internet is a dangerously distracting place. Throw some halfway interesting shit at me and see how long I can go without surfacing for air. But it's even worse for me with books. Because with the Web, you can get up, leave, and come back and dick around between sites. You get the occasional between-click breather.

But books are a different story. They are far more absorbing. They demand far more of my attention.

I'll probably grow old and sad like Meredith Burgess at the end of that episode of The Twilight Zone: finally, I'll have all the time in the world to read (because, like a cockroach that simply refuses die no matter how much bug spray you use, I am doomed to a hell of outliving you all, except for maybe the kidiots who live in my flat and who make cockroaches seem like a bevy of Playboy bunnies for house guests in comparison). But like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, my glasses will break and I won't be able to read them.

Anyway. Everything leads to everything else. It's all interconnected. I grok this.

That's why I've changed my thesis topic, oh, about seven times in the last week alone (whittled down from a shortlist of about 43 -- I kid you not). I've been drawing up this list of Really Big Questions that I've wanted to pursue for years now, but have never had the time or the incentive. Of course now I have the latter in spades, but nowhere near as much of the former as I'd like. And it's why I'm trying not to panic even at this very moment. Because the temptation is great to read more, get wrapped up in something, then reckon it may not be the topic for me after all.

See, these research questions always lead to bigger, more all-encompassing and all-consuming questions. Such as: Am I wasting my time? Is there something juicier waiting for me? Will this lead somewhere useful? Will this eventually benefit mankind? Or is my head so far up my own ass that what I am seeing is actually the view from my own navel?

You get what I mean.