Inattention

I have to admit that I've been paying even less attention than normal to the news recently. The steady diet of infectious disease and racial injustice news has become repetitive and it seems to crowd out, or inject itself into, everything else. Of course I understand that for many people, this is exactly what they're interested in. After all, this is why "doomscrolling" is a thing.But I'm not in that demographic, and so the constant stream of stories has no interest for me. Mostly because they've already reached the point where there's little new information in them. What's happening in the world of the coronavirus today, or what random things happened at the most recent protest just isn't useful. It feels more productive to catch up on all that perhaps once a week, after enough new information has been gathered that stories at least appear to be informative.

But being the sort of person who likes to read, and who likes to feel at least somewhat informed about the world, this has left me feeling a bit out of the loop. So I've been bouncing from thing to thing, trying to pick up on some of all of the other things that have been happening in the world. Which is an interesting experience. Still, given that most of what passes for news is "for entertainment purposes only" (because I'm a cheapskate), I'm not sure that I found it an informative one. But no news cycle lasts forever, and I'm certain that I'll find myself being nostalgic for the current ones, given enough time.