No More News!

 Nipping the News Bud

For many years, I paid little or no attention to the news, to politics, to the global economy.  When something truly major happened, I would learn about it, but the variances of the day weren't my concern.  I was caregiving for my mother, and attempting to learn some of the lessons for which I was placed on this earth. 

In the past few months, however, I've been swept into the constant news cycle.  I've decided this is not in my best interests. It simply makes me agitated and worried to know that the Dow Jones is dropping, the latest lie a politician has said, that the price of soybeans is reaching record highs, the number of victims in an auto accident in Outer Mongolia...I'm sure you see my point.

I can't do a thing about any of these. But knowing them, and seeing them updated hourly on my Google News ticker, makes them assume an importance in my life that they don't warrant. It's not that I don't care about the economy or who will govern the country or that people have died in accidents.

I do.

I care too much.

I was trained as a journalist and so each of these enters my subconscious as a story that should be pursued, no longer for publication, but simply because one should get to the bottom of all news stories.

 
The result is that I feel a constant state of anxiety about the future, which often prevents me from focusing fully on the present. I feel like deer in the headlines, so to speak, paralyzed by what might be coming next.

So I'm going to stop checking the news.  I'm going to ignore all the siren calls of hourly updates and in-depth analyses of current events. (At least I'm going to try!)

Instead, I'm going to focus on figuring out what the next right thing is in my life. I don't know what that is...yet.  I have some ideas and some options, but the for now I need to listen to the small, still voice in my heart that is my godly compass, pointing me in the direction for this, the next chapter of my life.

I'm anxious enough about what lies ahead.  I don't need the gaping maw of the insatiable media to munch on me as well. Instead I need to make the most of whatever days I have left on this earth..to fulfill whatever mission is left to me, to use whatever gifts I have been given, to become the person God wants me to be so that someday I might hear, 'Welcome home, Good and Faithful Servant."