My day begins in a fairly predictable way. Get up, feed the cats. Check e-mail. Check Facebook. Then dive into a few of my favorite news sites and spend the next hour there. Check back a few times during the day in case something interesting has happened. All in all, I probably spend at least a couple hours a day on news.
I started doing this during the run up to the election. It was interesting, and also a convenient form of procrastination that felt reasonably meaningful and useful. But I have to face a simple fact:
It's made me a less happy person.
It turns out I don't like knowing quite this much about what's going on in the world. A lot of what I read makes me angry, or apprehensive, or both. I don't mean to suggest that a tuned out life is a better life... but maybe, just maybe, I could give it a whirl.
So I'm taking a week-long break from the news. No CNN. No FoxNews. No news on TV. I'll also take the opportunity to cleanse my life of a lot of the other websites I waste time on everyday. No Cakewrecks. No Murderati. No Twitter. I'll continue to read actual friends' blogs, because there aren't that many of them and it really shouldn't take more than an hour a week. Also, 'cause I just can't go cold turkey.
I'm looking forward to this experiment. The ideal results would be an improved mood and increased production on my book. But frankly, I'd take either.
1 comments:
I'll be interested in hearing how this goes. The only time I did something similar was after the 7th Harry Potter book came out, and I didn't read it right away, so spend a week of total media paranoia avoiding potential spoilers. That meant I couldn't even look at the front page of most websites. I didn't really miss it.
And hey, I like the new look!
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