I'm one of those people who can't go more than an hour without checking a news website such as bbc or reuters. After a while however I'm left with the impression that the apocalyspe is just around the corner.
For every news item that details yet another teenager being stabbed there is one telling us that our houses aren't worth as much as duck turd, that we're all clinically obese and couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without collapsing, the ice caps are melting and the only way of combating it is to pay more tax, or that our hospitals are dirty and infect more people than they cure, and that we're either all going to die or need a small mortgage inorder to fill up our cars because Iran, Israel, and the USA seem intent on having a contest to see who's got the biggest WMD's.
I'm in desperate need of a news black out. I tried this last year and felt great while it lasted but like anyone who has tried to give up smoking will know, you have to make sure that you have no access to cigarettes at all. This will mean forbidding my good woman from watching any news programmes in my presence, and attempting to self-govern which websites I go on.
This second point will perhaps be the hardest one to do as I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to the world wide web. Having my own office and an attention span shorter than a goldfish's makes it extremely likely that, at some point during my working day, I will get the overwhelming urge to flick onto Reuters or the BBC for a quick sneaky peak at the days events. For all the good things it does the Internet is the mother of all distractions. Take this blog for example. Hardly anyone except myself (and the kind person who left me a comment on my last post) will ever read it. The same can be said for news websites. They are great at distracting me from what I should be doing but I end up feeling mad about things over which I have no control.
So as of now I'm burying my head in the sand - metaphorically speaking.
Feel free to join in and feel good about society again!