My life, lately, has been a sort of roller coaster. I recently started a new job (that has nothing to do with politics, alas) and the commute is a killer -- almost 2 hours. And the public transit is unreliable, so I tack on an extra hour in front of that, to an 8-hour shift.
It's brutal, but, as they say, complaining doesn't pay the bills (unless you're a pundit?)
Today was special. Many, many systems broke, and to make a long story short, I was paid some fairly undervalued wage to sit around and do next to nothing for 7 of my 8 hours. I had lots of time to think, and reflect on my life.
I came to several conclusions and decisions. Some of them are private, and not going to be shared. Some of them are mundane (I need to buy some soap, I think I'll go back to Irish Spring, it smells good). Some of them are a little more profound (I should finally go back to college and finish my degree), and one of them is what this diary is about.
I realized I spend a huge chunk of my day "out of touch" with the news cycle, the media, and generally, anything that's not related to work. I don't have a RSS ticker that I can watch, and I don't check CNN regularly. I can't keep an eye on the rec'd diary list. For almost 13 hours a day, I am effectively cut off from the outside world.
At first, I loved it. It was great. I would leave in the morning, and I would just smile, because there was nothing outside my little world that could go wrong. Well, nothing earth-shattering. I might have a bad day, but that was easily solved by Tomorrow.
Slowly, over the past month or so, I've realized I miss that constant stream of information. I don't need it. I'm not an addict (I don't think), but it's the sort of thing that I find myself always going, "I wonder what's going on on dkos..." during a (rare) idle moment at the workplace.
And then, something odd happened.
I found myself not caring. I remember when I followed Oregon politics rabidly. I had opinions on pretty much every piece of legislation being considered in my state and local governments, not to mention federal. I had speculations about the futures of almost all our politicians (Avel Gordly didn't surprise, but disappointed me with her resignation, by the way).
But then, I noticed, after a couple months, when I wasn't sucking in all sorts of information on all topics, I just.. didn't care.
It was sort of blissful. I know I'm making a fairly big mistake in not keeping track of what's going on. I know I'm going to want to know what's going on. And I don't want to know what's going on.
It's like a dream, an almost-lucid self is standing watch over myself, telling itself that I don't want to do this, and I'm standing here, not believing I'm dreaming, ignoring myself and wandering on, willfully ignorant, and hating myself for it.