No news is good news

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

And yet. I still have things to do.

I have, let's say, "above average curiosity". I like to know more than most people (in both ways you can emphasise that sentence.) So I dig and dig and dig and come back to the little endorphin-laced water bottle even after it has run dry.

But when the world's news is in its current state, I feel like I'm being bled of my attention and energy. I'm angry. I feel powerless, which makes me more angry and frustrated. It gives me nothing, and it takes something important from me.

Even worse, this is the intentional work of bad actors. They know a nazi salute can't be ignored. I grew up on forums, I know a troll when I see one. You don't feed the trolls. They feed and thrive on whatever vitriol they can suck from us.

I've had enough. I can't keep refreshing news pages again and again, I can't sit at breakfast fuming, losing what could and should be nice moments with my kids.

I won't let them keep taking this from me.

In How To Do Nothing, a book I think about all the time, Jenny Odell says:

To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it means constantly denying and thwarting provocations.

When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality differently. You begin to move and act in a different kind of world.

So, for half term I did an experiment: no news.

This is a disappointing story because there is no twist. I stopped reading the news every day and I felt better. I've had loads of good ideas for things I want to write and work and focus on. I have my energy back for what I want to do. And I feel better.

I caught glimpses here and there – a headline in a vacuum, no picture, no detail, no hyperlink to lure me into the full editorial. But they really just became reminders of why I'm opting out.

But where does this go? Can or should this be sustained? What is the right level of informed?

I had some idea that I might just read The Economist when it arrived. Then this came through the door:

Oof.

Like many people, I have a growing pile of half-read newspapers. And what I've noticed is: once an issue if a couple of weeks old, many of the articles become redundant. There is no article about a potential Kamala Harris presidency that I need to read now. So in a way, why did I need to read it then either?

Here's the new theory: I'm going to let a couple of weeks of these build up, then check in (and work my way through the old issues in the mean time.)

I still read for work, I still read tech news and kind of vertical topics. But Musk, Trump and other nightmare words are all blocked wherever I can do it.

If you live in America, maybe you'd go the other way. Maybe I'd be looking at how I could take action. Maybe I should be doing that even here, and maybe I'm avoiding some responsibility to change things.

But I haven't been able to find the strength for real action while being drained as I have. I do think if that's an option, it will come from taking back control (who doesn't love that phrase.) And this is the way for me to do that.

The thing about the news is: it can never give me the satisfaction I want. It's time to look elsewhere.