Protect Your Peace: The Benefits of Disconnecting from Media

 My posts have been so downbeat lately. First, I was whining about how my eye surgery got FUBARed, 

Then, the election had me in a total rage. 

But I’m here this week to report I’m feeling better. 

I’ve stopped reading the news and going on social media, and it’s made a tremendous difference in my stress level. I feel way calmer, and I’m a lot less aggro. 

I turned the news and social media spigot off in one day. Everything. 

Delete. Delete. Delete.

 Instagram is still dripping in a little, but I’ve put a twenty-minute-a-day cap on it. 

I never knew it was possible to set time limits until fairly recently. Here’s how:

Settings->Screen Time->App Limits->Add Limit

Then, add the apps you want to limit and set your time restrictions. It’s simple. And it will give you your life back.

And when you get your life back you’ll probably start to do things. Real things. In the world things. With people you know IRL. 

You’ll stop thinking about the shit that Trump may or may not do next month, or next year, or whenever.

If you need to worry about that stuff, you can worry about it when it actually happens and not now when it may or may not happen. Worrying is worshipping the problem and you don’t want to do that.

In the meantime, you can read books, (I’m currently reading the new Murakami) and focus on real things like getting ready for Christmas, (here’s my tree:)

or writing more, or doing a hobby, or getting yourself a hobby if you don’t already have one. 

You can watch fluffy stuff on TV. I’m watching Shrinking, The Diplomat, and A Man On The Inside at the moment. 

You can think of your Word Of The Year for 2025. This year, my word(s) were: WHAT IF?

Figuring out my word for this coming year will take some serious cogitating, methinks. 

Stay tuned.

You can protect your peace by building firm walls, boundaries, and lines in the sand.

You can say No to stuff and people you have no time for.

You can say yes only to stuff and people who make you happy. 

You can start your list of twenty-five things you want to do in 2025. 

But you (and I) can’t do any of those things if we’re distracted with news and Facebook and other online nonsense. 

Maybe what we need to heal from all this distraction and alienation in the world is to take a beat. To step away from the noise. To be quiet for a while.

There’s a great poem by Pablo Neruda called Keeping Quiet. Towards the end of this poem he says this:

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving, 

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves.

That line, “..this sadness of never understanding ourselves…” has been reverbing in my head for the last few days. 

We —meaning you and me, and all of us, need to turn off this spigot, this firehose of media bombardment, and allow a considerable silence to grow—a silence, like a neighborhood, where we can get to know each other again.