When I was growing up my world wide web consisted of the spiders in the backyard. Okay maybe it was a few other places too, but essentially my world was as far as I could see, so my yard, the grocery store and maybe Grandma’s house once a year. It wasn’t until we packed up our meager belongings into the covered wagon and made the trek to the middle west state of South Dakota, that I discovered this wonderful and terrible device called a computer.

Ironically, it was a game called Oregon Trail that introduced me to the old 1’s and 0’s. I remember very clearly the sounds and clicks that went along with the game and getting dysentery for the first  time and wondering what the heck that was.

My kids were born and raised with an Ipad in one hand and a phone in the other. For me, it was a gradual thing from Oregon Trail to dial-up to know multiple tabs on 4 different screens at work.

Having a different tab open on a computer would have been a Micheal J. Fox Back-to-Future type moment for me 25 years ago. My computer time back then consisted of booting up the computer and eating a meal. Then I logged on and enjoyed a walk around the park. Then I opened a website, and went and saw a movie. Back then you had all the time in the world while you were waiting for a website to load. The WWW should have stood for the World is Waiting for a Website to open .com.

My IT guys keep telling me that having all those tabs open is why my computer is so slow. I’m like, I need my email one open, my blog needs to be open, my video one needs to be open, and my Facebook needs to be open in case something happens (My job is social media, after all).

My problem is that my brain has a bunch of tabs open all the time and that must be why I’M so slow. There is the one that is worried about my kids leg, one that is worried about my daughter’s schoolwork, one that worries about how much money we have, and then there are the irrational thoughts like, why haven’t I posted a photo on Instagram lately, or why haven’t I made a Bitter News from the Couch lately?

No wonder I can’t get any sleep. My computer seems to be able to go into sleep mode just fine. I close the lid and it just goes right to sleep. I let it sit for 15 minutes and it takes a nap, no problem. I’m thinking that why the Terminator’s are going to take over the world so easily. They are able to sleep just fine but wake up with all their tabs open just fine. I guess the only way we will be able to stop them is to get a virus, and Mac computers are getting better and better at blocking those.

Your turn. What tabs do you have open all the time? Are you able to put your mind to sleep as easily as computers do?

ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

Bitter Tabs Open Constantly Ben