Consumption

I am trying to be more mindful of what I consume and how much of it.

Not so much food, but news, information, images…. It is entirely possible for me to spend hours on the news each day. The endless cycles of rapidly-changing information. The “24 hour news cycle”, which we are all sick of hearing about (and honestly, it seems as though it’s now the “24 minute news cycle”…). Reports on this and that, and polls, and interviews, and articles that make my blood boil, and comments from ‘leaders’ that make me question the future of our country, our world…

I realized last week that I had gone entirely too far down the news rabbit hole, and I was spending far too much time there, and then fretting about it in my own head, for my own good.

It’s so hard to change, though, and it’s even harder when you spend your days, as I do, in front of a computer. Where the news, the headlines, the information – it’s all just a quick click away. So I am doing my best. I am trying to check in on those things that feed me – emails from friends and family. Instagram (I’ve been pretty good about curating my feed there to be positive and uplifting, not the, um, depthless rabbit hole of FB…). Getting out for walks without my phone – yes, without my phone. Reading.

It’s hard. I want to stay informed. I am so invested in everything going on… politics, pandemic, racial inequities… I am desperate for change, for a shift in perspective… and yet, I can’t pin all my hopes on that, because what if…?

So I try to remind myself that I can only do what I can do. I try to remember that endless reading of headlines and news stories probably won’t change the course of human history (boy, would THAT be interesting). And I try to remember that “…whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should” (Max Erhmann, Desiderata).