While walking the Camino Frances I did not read a newspaper, listen to TV news, or listen to the radio news. I had no idea what was happening in the world, it was great – there was a magnificent freedom in it.
For more than a month the world kept turning without my having to watch every thing to make sure life was okay.
The last year saw me getting addicted to news once again. I shook myself from that depressing pattern a few months back and feel much better for again ignoring much of what is going on in the world.
News programs are entertainment – yes entertainment in the worse possible way. There is someone behind every news program making the decisions. They decide what negative stories they are going to bombard you with today.
Over time there have been a few newspapers, they all failed, which though they could sell good news to us every day – apparently we are not that interested in good news. I have seen the same on the internet, it is a bit easier to make it pay there – but still they are not very successful.
Living in Ireland, as I do, I keep waiting for the next shoe to fall. And I think this has had a lot to do with my recent preoccupation with our incompetent government. Instead of making decisions as most government do this bunch have decided to contract out all decision making to groups – get the group to write a report and then implement it, this way you can divert the consequences away from yourself.
Sorry, I digress. Up until a few months back I was watching the TV news in the morning. I was checking the Irish Times website during the day, at 4.30pm George Hook starts on NewsTalk and I was there listening to him lambast every government decision, (not that there has been many).
George, sorry to say, I have abandoned you. Much as I like your take on the world it all became too much for me.
Everyone I met was talking about how bad things have become, who is losing their job, who is next. Then I got into a conversation with my neighbour one day about it all.
Instead of boring you with all the details of the conversation, the essence was that we lived through worse. I lived through the years of Maggie Thatcher in the 80’s – now that was tough – but as I said in that conversation, my tennis got so much better.
My tennis getting better got me thinking. What could I do just now that would bring me out of this at the other end better off?
I cut down my news intake, bye bye George, and then I decided to make all my websites much better. Write more content – well I would now save time by not watching so much news. This has worked, I have more energy again, the feeling of waiting for my world to end has passed, thankfully.
I keep forgetting there is only a little part of the world that I can influence, my friends, my family – that is it, this is where my effort is once again.
How has you news intake changed over the last year?
Thanks for this post. I am NOT a fan of news in any form, TV, radio, newspapers, but my husband is addicted and he gets in such a negative state after the latest negative news bit, AND I get to be the sounding board for all his rants. I just copied this post for him to read. I hope it helps him see that there are more fun things in life to think about.
Rita
Being positive is a good thing – the news never seems to help me in this.
I had a look at your blog – the park that you walk in – Maudslay State Park, looks great. I live in the centre of Dublin so it is a fair drive to get out into the hills, so it is mostly only at the weekends.