My eyes burn from reading the computer

I was talking to my step sister-in-law this weekend in Utah and she was telling me about my step nephew's experience as a sixth-grader at a private school (I have step relatives now that I am married, right? If they are step relatives to Tony they are now my step relatives and vice-versa?). It seems they have done away with the textbooks and are doing everything on computers now. We talked about the pros: up-to-date information, reduction in overall costs, etc; and the con: how hard it is to read a computer screen for a long period of time. I realize that many of us look at a computer screen for a good part of our work day, but we aren't trying to read chapters in a textbook. Maybe it's not like that at all, but i do know that if I get caught up in reading blogs for too long, my eyes start to burn and it gets hard for me to focus.

Speaking of reading blogs, it wasn't until somewhat recently that I realized that people read blogs as entertainment and some writers can actually make a living off of writing blogs. Yes, I realize I was behind the times for quite some time and didn't realize this until one of my favorite people wrote about how she reads people's blogs for fun and linked to a few. There was a post that linked to a blog that has a sidebar with links to many blogs. I started reading a few of these other blogs and recently a couple have gone away. An event or maybe more caused these writers to decide to stop sharing their lives with The Internet and it makes me wonder why. The bloggers started sharing about these life-altering events and then just stopped. These blogs were read by many people and several of these people would decide to post responses to whatever the writers decided to share with The Internet. Unfortunately, strangers sometimes say mean things to writers who decide to write about their lives on The Internet and I think this may have contributed to the end of these blogs that I speak of.

The Internet is a weird creature.