Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying
One of the joys of the transition from 45 to Joe Biden was that I no longer woke up wondering what lunacy had come from the Twitter account of 45 overnight. That joy has been extinguished. Consequently, I have largely switched off all broadcast news sources and severely cut back my already scant time on short-form social media.
There is a negative reason for this – the news comes at you like one of those French farm protests where they spray silage and manure at municipal buildings through a hosepipe. I don’t need that. More to the point, constant repetition of that stuff on a half-hourly cycle distorts understanding: it’s hard to maintain perspective when you’re soaked in shit. Of course I have opinions, but I don’t see the need to shout them and add to the signal:noise confusion, at least at present (this is my blog and I reserve the right to be opinionated and inconsistent in the future.)
There are also positive reasons for the change. The main one is that it shifts my attention to local and personal concerns that have more immediate impact on my life. But it also seems to me that refocusing on the personal and, in my case, putting out a book shortly (more news to come very soon) and focusing on writing chapter one of another novel are my own minor acts of rebellion: creativity is resistance.
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