I started the new year by sleeping in, and then watching three episodes of Azumanga Daioh on my iPod touch while lying in bed. After eating breakfast and showering, I then took a three hour nap.

Oh, I’m doing just great.

Now that I’ve actually been awake for more than two consecutive hours, I’ve started in on various housekeeping tasks: swapping my 2008 Hayate calendar for a 2009 Higurashi one, moving my email into a “2008” folder, and I’ve just started in on cleaning out my browser bookmarks.

I have over ten years of bookmarks. I don’t think I’ve ever bothered cleaning them out.

That is just one front in a much larger war, though: I have too much stuff on my computer, and too much stuff in my life. Too much weight on my body, as well. All this stuff, regardless of form, just serves to slow me down and makes it harder to get to the stuff I really want… it’s high time to change things.

(I’m not going to the “Steve Jobs sitting by himself in the middle of an empty room” extreme, though. I like having things; I just don’t need everything I’ve accumulated over the years.)

Everyone at work today agreed that they were too tired to greet 2009 in style; we all just wanted to go home, do something quiet, and collapse in a heap when the feeling hit us.

In that spirit, Nate and I rang in the New Year by watching episode 3 of Giant Robo. Nate informed me, prior to watching, that Giant Robo is the most expressive robot ever, and he was right—in the most hilarious way. <Maybe I need to make a spoiler tag>Never before have I seen a robot cry buckets after smashing its fist to pieces.</Maybe I need to make a spoiler tag>

But, yeah: quiet. As I looked through The Big Picture’s Year in Photographs a week or two ago, I was reminded of how eventful the last year really was. Personally, the last year was largely unremarkable, save for how quickly it seems to have passed.

I remember when waiting a month for a movie to come out felt like an eternity; these days I think of the time between when House ends for the summer and starts in the fall as a brief, pleasant break from TV. Part of that, I suspect, is due to my old theory that we accelerate to our death (as each day becomes an increasingly insignificant amount of the number of days we’ve already experienced)… but now I suspect another part of that is a side effect of information overload. Specifically: with all the stuff available to distract us, time seems to pass faster.

The internet certainly distracts me, at least. A noteworthy trend from the last year was my inability to be productive anywhere but at work. On the clock I feel honor-bound to not screw around; the rest of my life I’m apparently more than willing to waste by drooling on myself in front of my computer. That’s something that needs to change; I (hope I!) have more to do with my life than what I’m getting done.