Like many of you, I didn’t do any serious time-wasting until I got my first real job. Oh sure, I had wasted plenty of time before that point – especially in college. I used to spend entire Saturdays not writing papers, not studying for exams, not reading James Joyce novels, and not learning how to speak German. And that was before I started drinking. But what they say is true: college is a lot different than the real world, Bucko. And in the real world, if you want to waste time, you gotta work for it.

     About a year into my first full-time job, I began finding pockets of time in which to do nothing of importance. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I began learning how to create pockets of time in which to do nothing of importance. Not to brag, but I got pretty good at this. I can offer some tips if you want. Send inquires to mike@volumone.org, subject line: lazy ass.

     Did I feel guilty about this? Yep. But as a wise man named Al Pacino said in a stupid movie about lawyers and Satan (costarring Keanu Reeves), “Guilt is like carrying a f***ing bag of bricks. Put it down.”

     So I put it down.

     My time-waster of choice was, of course, the internet. I can’t claim to be an early adopter with this, but I was definitely floating within the first giant wave of web-obsessed nine-to-fivers. I was often working all by myself, and my cubicle was in a near-abandoned alcove of the office building. It was just me and the awesome IT guy back there. For a dorky single guy, it was the best job ever.

     I spent a lot of time online. A lot of time. Oddly enough, I never got into chatrooms or role-playing games or finding old classmates or pictures of Britney Spears or any of the other big trends that sucked hordes of people online a decade ago. I mostly read stuff. I told myself it was OK to spend so much time doing this as long as I focused on stuff that increased my general knowledge of the world around me. This doesn’t mean I was reading scholarly dissertations all day at work – I still checked out my share of stupid, pointless, hilarious pictures of dogs dressed up in pirate costumes. But I also learned a lot of important stuff – a lot of non-job-related stuff, but good stuff nonetheless.

It’s hard to say what first hooked me into it. The net is so mind-bogglingly huge and diverse and weird and awesome ... there’s something for everyone to madly obsess over. It was probably something to do with ninjas. In the decade since I first “got the internet,” a lot has changed. It’s a totally different animal. At this point, it takes a lot to impress longtime users. It’s kind of like special effects in movies – a super-realistic giant-ass lizard destroying New York just doesn’t drop jaws anymore. And, of course, the truly impressive stuff has nothing to do with how something looks. It’s all about how it works.

     Whereas, ten years ago, viewing a little video online dropped jaws, today’s internet-based wonderment is more subtle, but more powerful. One finds it in the eerie feeling you get when a site like Facebook does something totally unexpected and extremely useful, and you wonder how the hell this vast cloud of information floating out there on the web just knew you needed it – before you even knew you needed it yourself.

     Not to use a pretentious phrase like “As we’ve evolved with the internet,” but, as we’ve evolved with the internet, the way we use it and what we need from it changes vastly year to year. If I’d have had a fraction of today’s cool internet technology back when I first got into it, I’d never have gotten any work done at all. I would have lost my job and my ability to pay for an internet connection. I’d be living in an Amish community right now, milking goats and wearing suspenders.

     I’m kidding, of course, because while it can be used to waste time, the internet is too universal to simply dismiss as a time-waster, as many uninformed people tend to do. It’s like saying “going outside” is a time-waster. The best stuff on the web today molds itself around your life, not the other way around.

     You can still get fired for using it too much at work – but now it can help you find a job the next day.