PATTERN
Searching for the feeling of having done something
What it is
When you are frightened about your dad, you look it up, and you know the search is not for information, it is for the ninety seconds of having done something, after which you are worse informed and more scared.
How it affects your life
It ends with the laptop closed and nothing learned, because what you have read is the top of a results page and not a paper. You are clear-eyed about the whole mechanism while it is happening, which does not stop it.
Evidence
5 quotes
“which means I am not building it to find out. I am building it to have done something about the feeling.”
Reinforced later
Read the entry →“Looked up the drive this morning while the coffee was going. Six hundred and ninety miles.”
Reinforced later
Read the entry →“It is not information, it is the feeling of having done something, and the feeling lasts about ninety seconds and is followed immediately by being worse informed and more frightened than I was before, because I have read the top of a results page and not a paper.”
First mention
Read the entry →“Then closed the laptop, which I am aware is a complete sentence about me.”
First mention
Read the entry →“Looked up what they mean by a warning.”
First mention
Read the entry →
These do nothing here. On your own map this card is yours to reword, hide or delete, and every quote opens the entry it came from.