Poison

We just returned from an idyllic 3-week vacation in France.  It couldn't have been better.  We did two Viking river cruises.  One from Paris to Normandy and back and one originating from Lyon and floating through Southern France.  And we finished with 3 wonderful days in Nice exploring the Cote de Azur.  That we did it with another couple who are old and dear friends made it that much better.

During our time away we tried to unplug (except for Facebook posts of photos of our trip).  It was great to let all the poison, anger, paranoia, vitriolic hatred, and stress that we experience every day fall away.  Of course, upon our return we were hit in the face with the Kavanaugh mess, the crazy idiot from Florida sending fake pipe bombs in the mail, the gruesome shooting today of 11 innocents in a Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the frenetic and disgusting ramp up to the mid-terms.  The contrast between our 3 weeks away and our 1 week back has been dramatic.

So I got to thinking, what is healthier?  How does all this hate and angst impact my daily demeanor and long term prospects?  And of course the answer is that the more I can remove all the craziness and the poison produced by the media, the better off I'll be.  So I've unfollowed and unfriended a ton of people on FB.  Basically I'm keeping track of family, friends, and Rotary.  I've walked away from Twitter.  I've started restricting my TV exposure so that I'm not being inundated by the talking heads who want me to believe certain things.  And as for the blog, I'm not sure where it's going.  I think that if I try to unplug from other areas of social media, maybe I won't have much to say.   And maybe I won't be as fired up about things.  And honestly, I think that's healthy.

A lot of stupid people say we're in dire straits.  That the country is going down.  That if one side doesn't win, the world as we know it is coming to an end.  They demonize and destroy and predict doom and gloom.  Well, I'm not buying it.  I'm a pretty good student of our history.  We've been in way worse places than today.  But we've never had to deal with the crazy conventional media and social media structure that is tearing everything apart.  So in my little way, I'm going to try and minimize my exposure to the craziness.  And by doing that, I may retain a bit of sanity.