I stopped watching the news.
I have been addicted to it like never before. In fact, in the before I never watched news. It was always depressing to me and “ain’t nobody got time for that!” But since covid hit it’s been a different story.
I think there were two factors that caused my addiction. One, I wasn’t working and two, the daily coronavirus press briefings. So I had time on my hands and there was daily entertainment that was live. It became “must see tv” to watch the briefings everyday around 5:00 pm. We would bring the tv outside, pull up youtube (the best way to view the conferences) and watched as the kids played.
When the President stopped these daily shows I then moved on to watching the highly entertaining, hardly informative press conference from the press secretary. Well, they were entertaining at first and then just became downright frustrating but I still watched as my addiction took hold.
I pulled my wife into this addiction. She would come home everyday from work and ask, “Did anybody talk today? What did they say?” We would discuss what people said and then wonder…
What will Don say tonight?
What will Tucker say tonight?
What will Chris say tonight?
Ingrahm is going to be interesting
See, I got to know all the host of the nightly game shows and had to see if they confirmed or rejected my views on the “talk” from the administration.
It was addicting. I was addicted.
This news watching doesn’t include the hours on Twitter or Facebook…whew…you can really go down a rabbit hole here.
I had an intervention.
I deleted Facebook. I deleted Twitter. Just a reboot though – full disclosure – I have reinstalled them but the reboot worked. After two days away from them I learned – or think I have – how to manage them better and I am staying away from doom scrolling.
Since that reboot seemed to work with social media I decided to do the same thing with the television/youtube media. I stopped watching the news on Sunday. I didn’t watch…I watched the Falcons find another way to lose a football game (yelling at the screen “Jump on the ball!” ugh…). I didn’t watch Monday…instead we introduced ourselves to “Schitt’s Creek” (pretty enjoyable!). I have also read more. I replaced my old keyboard Kindle with a new paper white and LOVE it. I have also used the newly found or rediscovered time to do my school work. It’s Tuesday morning as I type this and I am already almost complete for the week. This doesn’t usually happen until the deadline day of Sunday unfortunately. In addition, I’m writing this blog post!
I feel better
Just that quick
2 day reboot – no news.
And I don’t miss it. I don’t feel a pull to watch. It’s been an interesting 2 day experiment and I am liking the results.
MattMunnell.com 