A few days ago I unsubscribed from two well-written, timely and informative newsletters.
Both focused on covering politics and the news, mostly in terms of how politics often is the news. Both were American-centric, but the U.S. does have a rather lot of influence on the world.
Over the past few days, I found myself starting to read the current edition of each newsletter, then stop. A few times I just straight up deleted them, unread. I thought about how I stopped checking the news on a daily basis and how every time I have checked the news since then, it reinforces what a wise decision that was.
These newsletters were making me feel pretty much the same way as ingesting the news on a daily basis had: bad.
If I want to feel bad, I can just step on the scale. It’s quicker, costs me nothing and fifteen minutes later I’ll have either forgotten about it or rationalized it in some way (“Focus on the long term, not daily fluctuations”). The bad feeling does not linger.
Reading bad or unpleasant news–especially political news–lingers. It burrows into my psyche. I don’t like that. Is it a me problem? Possibly.
But I have an easy me solution–just don’t read that stuff! I can still stay informed without soaking in it, as it were.
And so my email inbox grows slightly slimmer. Now if I can just do the same.
