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27 Jan, 2021

Knowing what's going on is a full-time job these days. We have access to information from the entire world, always available, always on. But do we need it?

Off the News Cycle

I've left the news cycle behind a while ago, as an experiment, and as a defense against the stresses of 2020 that led to me having some fairly severe anxiety issues. And I've found that I don't really want to go back now. I had a few questions going into my "news cleanse":

Would I feel "cut off" from the world?
Would I miss major events that impact my life?
Was I being just terribly naive thinking that would work at all?

And here are my answers so far:

Am I cut off from the world?

Well, yes. I can't tell you exactly what the COVID counts are in my city or state or nation. I know they're still bad. But I also know that vaccines are coming, and that we're heading to a better place.

And I think this isn't just "okay" I think it's actually GOOD. We weren't built to handle stress on all these levels of abstraction. Our brains were built to handle the world as it is right around us; we aren't good at responding to distant stress in a distant way; we treat it all as local and immediate. This is a biological imperative, and anyone who thinks they can "distance themselves" from news is misinformed.

So yeah, I'm cut off, but I'm good with that.

Am I missing major events that impact my life?

No. Because I'm still in touch with ACTUAL HUMANS. I knew all about the election and the hideous events that came out of that. People around me talk to me, and I find out about the things that matter, without the stress and pain that comes from following each wrinkle and development along the way. So the "big" things break through, via human contact (aka how humans have always worked) and I'm still fairly connected.

Is it insane to think I can live like this?

I don't think so, actually. Being free of Twitter and BBC News and Fox news and CNN et al has made me happier, and has provided a bit more perspective on what does and doesn't matter in the long term, instead of responding to every event.

And now I have more time to respond to news events that matter, like what my children are doing.

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