Tackling #8

New Year's Resolution #8 was:

8) Watch and read the news, facebook, and twitter WAY less. Other people can save the world through retweets for awhile.

This is going to be a toughie. Not because I can't do it, I've done it before. But because I have limited forms of entertainment at this point. The amount of television I can find online is dwindling. Seriously, I'm watching Columbo right now. Starting at season 1. I don't seem to have a lot of attention span for books and I can run through a New Yorker right quick. So basically Twitter and Facebook are my lifelines of distraction.

But this cord needs to be cut.

There came a moment in the election of 2012 when I thought my head/heart/brain/body was going to explode from rage. I'm a very passionate and opinionated person. Always have been and I make no apologies for it. I started writing letters to the editor on a typewriter when I was about 9. My whole family is this way except I'm the only "liberal" in the bunch. I don't really resonate with the label "liberal" but to each his own. But I'm exhausted of being angry and negative. I'm exhausted of caring so much and not really being able to do anything about it. I can rant and rage and repost and retweet all the live long day but we all know I'm probably not changing anyone's minds. Certain Facebook posts just makes me dislike people I previously had no problem with. I'm sure they dislike me now too. It takes all the power I possess not to continually point out factual errors in people's crazy-induced political posts. I now just unsubscribe from them. And that is sad. They are perfectly nice people that I wish I had never known were bananas. Or at least believed banana things. Oh! The examples I could give. But I digress.

I'm tired of trying to convince anyone, including those that share my genes, that Fox News and MSNBC are not telling you any form of the truth. I stopped watching pundits from either side years ago because they create the erroneous rage machine that has taken over our lives.

But Twitter sends the same type of hysteria in link form every 2 seconds directly to my phone.
EVERY 2 SECONDS.

Look outside your window.
Right now.
Barring a natural disaster I bet it doesn't look so bad.

Outside of my window it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, weird tropical birds are making weird tropical bird noises, the little boy with two nannies next door is talking to them in a language I cannot understand but he sounds happy. My husband and puppy, whom I both love a bunch, just went for a walk. They will come back smelling of the outdoors. My puppy will smell so bad I might gag. My across the street neighbor's house is white with a lovely blue accent color. And that's just my immediate observations.

So I simply want to stop the fear and hysteria from invading my house and my soul as much as possible. Life is hard enough without courting other troubles. I want to focus back down on my own life. I want my sweet baby to be immune from all this stress for as long as possible, starting in utero.

Anyway- back to the problem at hand. How much am I going to limit myself and for how long?
I think I'm going to go cold turkey on the Twitter news. That's where I get most of my news these days. That's going to be hard because when I feel bad I use it as a distraction.

Rules:
1) No more Twitter until baby is here. Yikes.
2) News on Weds and Sunday only? I'm already feeling behind.
3) Facebook 1x a day, 10 minute limit. Wow. Seems extreme. 

I'm still going to care about the issues I really care about and I'll probably write about it on here at some point. Women and children's access to health care and gun control instantly come to mind. Outrage over campaign finance reform, foreign policy issues, genetically modified ingredients, and my general disdain for all of Congress (for example) I'm going to leave to someone smarter than me.

And the starting line is today!