Contemplating online content can feel like a leisurely saunter through the woods, if that's how you choose to engage.

Like any curious explorer, you're eager to give your full attention to each striking sight and sound that enters your awareness.

Like the clump of mushrooms jutting out from that log over there.

What delightfully curvy stems!

You pull out your field guide and read about some intriguing properties of the mushrooms.

You sit against the log and your mind surfaces three connections at once:

There's a Community episode where they're on drugs in the woods.

Entrepreneur twitter is interested in mushrooms.

A twitter follow has written a book about an aspiring mushroom farmer.

You laugh as you jot down each thought in the margin of your field guide.

Each of these connections has tendrils of its own, additional directions to explore.

So many possibilities, as with the best conversations.

As you rise you hear the flapping of wings.

An owl with a fresh kill roosts in the branches above you.

You flip through the pages of your field guide to identify it, and three more connections emerge:

The owls roosting in a twitter follow's yard.

The owl face at the top of a skyscraper.

The owls to Athens idiom.

You identify the species and note the connections.

But as you close your field guide, that last connection demands your attention.

"To do or undertake something redundant, pointless, or futile."

What's the measure of redundancy?

Who's to say what's pointless?

How can one declare something futile before the story is over?

One must imagine Sisyphus happy, after all.

You wave goodbye to the mushrooms and the owl and you smile, grateful to explore.