The Absurdity of Trying to Break My News Addiction
Congratulations to me — I have gone exactly one entire day without reading the news.
Like everybody else, I am a collection of bad personal habits.
Eating too many gummy bears.
Owning too many shoes, shawls and sweaters.
Some of my addictions have positive payoffs — e.g. my natural hyperactivity translates into devotion to daily exercise.
Over the years I have gone through phases where I ate too many cookies, consumed more than healthy portions of ice cream, smoked cigars, chewed gum until my jaw got sore and wore high heels that gave me shooting pains in my feet.
But perhaps my worst addiction of all is my lifelong habit of obsessing over the news.
I could give you many reasons why this is the case.
Such as how in my 20s I was actually a newspaper reporter.
I covered everything and went everywhere from the Elysee palace to inside nuclear power plants, interviewing Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan simultaneously, writing exposes about slum landlords, labor unions, corrupt politicians and every president of the Federal Reserve at the time.
It was fun and a great way to learn as much about the world as any 20ish curious person such as myself could fathom.
Fast forward and I’m now 61.
I don’t need to explain to you about the news in 2020.
Coronavirus, race riots and the presidential election pretty much covers enough territory to give just about anyone an ulcer or a panic attack depending on where you are most physically or psychologically vulnerable.
After finding myself feeling particularly exhausted and depressed recently I called my mentor for a healing session.
We had discussed me breaking my nasty news habit before but this time I had to admit things were coming down to continuing to read the news or my mental wellbeing.
The last time I had tried to break my news addiction hadn’t worked out so well.
I remember I had been in Asheville studying yoga all weekend and had to drive through steep and twisted mountain passes in the dark on…
