Volume 4

I now have a title for the fourth volume of my future autobiography.

The Tim Goldberg Story, Volume 4: Chasing the Burrito

This evening I planned to join some friends for dinner, probably burritos or something similar. It was a little late at night, so the first place we went was just about closed, and the second place we went apparently closed up shop about 6 months ago. Fortunately, we struck gold, as well as burrito goodness, with the third place. We decided to call tonight's adventure "Chasing the Burrito".

In other news, Richard Dawkins is my new hero.

I have a problem.

They say that's the first step, right? Admitting that you have a problem? Well, my problem has to do with desktop wallpapers for my computer. I change my wallpaper constantly (figuratively speaking), and spend lots of time online searching for new images that might make suitable wallpapers. At one point I thought I had solved my problem by having my wallpaper automatically rotate through a folder of different pictures, but now I spend hours sorting and resorting pictures into different folders, instead of just picking individual images. I can't help but feel that all of this is a great waste of my time, (although an argument can be made that I get a certain sense of relaxation from the sorting process, looking at images I've collected).

Just to be clear, these images are almost entirely natural landscapes or inspired by comic books and super-heroes. I'm not talking about pornography here.

There have been periods where this compulsion has abated, where I've stuck with a single wallpaper, or even a specific slideshow of wallpapers, for as long a couple of weeks. But this never lasts too long.

I've thought about using only a wallpaper-of-the-day, such as those offered online by National Geographic, but I just don't like most of those pictures.

I've also thought about trying to bribe a friend to pick wallpapers for me, but I haven't stooped that far yet.


I think the main reasons of my wallpaper-changing compulsion are the following.
(1) I want a pleasing image on my desktop, both aesthetically and psychologically.
(2) I feel that my choice of wallpaper should reflect my interests and personality, and be a good advertisement of them.
(3) I like to procrastinate doing the actual work I should be doing.

Both (1) and (2) lead to wallpaper-changing because of my indecision and changing views regarding what pleases me and what impression I want to give about myself.

What's funny about all of this is that when I'm actually working on my computer, I don't really see much of the wallpaper anyway!

As I write this, my desktop wallpaper is a large version of this picture, from X-Men: First Class.