What’s the News?

I stopped following the news almost a year ago. I used to follow it constantly—anxious to see what would happen next. It’s not completely honest to say I stopped keeping up with the news for that long. Up until about four months ago, I was still listening to NPR in my truck for, at most, 20 minutes a day. That was mostly headlines unless there was a show on specifically talking about the news.

It’s not that I don’t care about what’s going on in the world—I just don’t have the mental capacity to deal with it. There’s enough going on in my life to give me stress. The last thing I need is to hear a bunch of inflated stories about what could be happening in the world soon. That’s what the news had become when I decided I was done with it. Ninety percent of it was talking about how bad things could get since X event happened. It’s almost never the case, and even if it is, there’s nothing I can do about it.

American politics is wild right now, so you might be thinking that I should keep up with it. I say, even more reason to not keep up with it. I already know how awful our current president is, and I know the importance of mid-terms and local races. It’s a lot less stressful to look into politicians’ platforms once or twice a year than it is to constantly tune in.

My biggest concern is that a natural disaster is going to catch me off guard. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of time to hunker down when I see the neighbors start scrambling. I can’t be bothered to worry too much, though. I’m probably much more likely to be taken out by a car crash than a volcano.