It isn't easy avoiding the news these days. It isn't just the bulletins any more. Social media is full of references to current affairs as well. And so I am going to have to avoid my beloved Twitter as well. This is no small matter for me. I basically check it every half hour in between blocks of work while I am working. I follow it when I am watching television programmes whose entertainment value is too low to justify 100% of my attention. And I pop onto it when I am reading to share thoughts, ideas and jokes provoked by the text. (Sorry about that if you follow me.)
So it is a big part of my life. Three weeks without it won't be easy. I've already dug up an old Hootesuite account I haven't been using to schedule posts onto Twitter without getting sucked into it. I hope I don't annoy too many people by not responding to them. But no doubt they have bigger things in their life than talking to me.
Having said that there is something to be said for being off news broadcasts, podcasts, social media in general and Twitter in particular. It's quite exciting keeping up with the latest twists and turns of the news. It is a lot calmer not having the steady drip of adrenalin. It means for example I don't need to arrange my morning's work around the 1 o'clock news. And have already started orientating my attention towards a couple of neglected long term non-urgent projects. I have long felt the need to brush up on my latin for example. Now there's a non-urgent task!
I am going to pay for this on election night because I will miss all the build up and will no doubt find that there are some key things that will have happened that I know nothing about. "Following the events of the last two weeks all eyes will be on the results from East Murpham" will have no significance at all. I'll have to see if I think it was worth it.
But in the meantime I will have more time to ponder what it all means for the big picture undistracted by the daily hurley burley.
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