Bad news overload. That’s what’s going on with me right now. Feeling totally drained by it. I’m desperate to avoid the news right now. How about you?
The news this week has been filled with horrific stories. Large scale human tragedies are unfolding. Gaza. MH17. Terrible stories where the loss of life has been great. Whole families wiped out. Children dying. And all for no reason in my book.
As I get older these sort of stories affect me more. I don’t know why. It could be because I’m a mother now. And being a mother has made me even more aware of the world around me.
I’m trying to censor what I see, but news outlets are filled with this important, but sad news. The same with my Twitter stream and Facebook feed. Hard to escape it outside of retreating into a cave without TV and WiFi. And that’s so not going to happen. For me at least.
So what I’m going to do is think about what is good about the world. Play my favorite music loud. And I may even sing along. (Apologies to everyone around me.) And I retreat into my happy place. My happy place is the beach. For right now photos and videos will have to do.
How do you handle the bad news overload?
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I know such crazy stuff happens everywhere. I feel bad for innocents and have little sympathy often for non-innocents. Usually its the kids who are the only innocents in war areas. But the Malaysian flight was all innocents. Crime victims are innocents. But there is more than that. So many sick people or unlucky like my neighbor who spent Thursday from 430m til Friday morning at 9am on his basement steps with a broken hip and elbow because he lived alone. If his dog walker didn’t come Friday morning he might have died since I surely didn’t hear anything.
That said I feel we have a duty to carry on and while still being mindful of the bad things in life.
I left the TV on in my hotel room Thursday night on a cable news channel. The same report (different reporters) was replayed every 30 minutes, with different analysts saying very similar things. Naturally, there were other stories, and while media outlets needs to prioritize their coverage, focusing in on stories over and over with very few updates really doesn’t serve much purpose.
For those living in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods, they experienced another weekend of incomparable gang-oriented violence.