I have been observing a news fast since the passage of the temporary funding bill and the end of the government shutdown (which really wasn't a shutdown but rather a selective punishment of certain portions of the American public by the legislative and executive branches). I was spending far too much time reading the news, watching the news, trolling blogs and punditry sites, obsessively checking various news feeds and Twitter. I never learned anything from these efforts of which I was not already aware. Now, in my line of work, I have to stay somewhat abreast of goings-on, so I cannot sustain this fast for long, but I am willing to push a bit, see how long that might be.
It has provided me with an insight into my personality, which suggests that I have something of an addictive relationship with certain forms of media and content. On one level I can convince myself that one more source, one more blog will provide that extra bit of information, a problem from which I suffer in my own research (which has had a deleterious effect upon my production of said scholarship), and this is certainly what I tell my students. But there is so very little worthwhile to be read on-line or in watching the news, regardless of the provider. Even PBS no longer provides the kind of serious, erudite insight into contemporary politics that it once did.
I do find myself idling in other ways, and so the next step is to find a way t channel that restless need into something more productive.
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