News Blackout 2

Exhausted from all the U.S., French, English, Ukraine, Gazan, and German news, my husband and I decided to do a news blackout including on-line, TV, columnists and other news sources from Tuesday until Sunday.

 

Could we go cold turkey?

 

Day 1 

Instead of listening to the news and/or checking the internet before cups of tea and dog walking, .we went straight to the showers... my fingers itched for the remote. I ignored it. 

I DID NOT read Thom Hartman, Dan Rather, Heather Cox Richardson, and Robert Reich.

 

Tuesday is our Free Write day when we meet with another writer and using a prompt write for ten minutes. Despite a slight wind, we sat at an outside café and the names, Supreme Court, Trump or Sunak, Macron, Gaza and Ukraine never fell from our lips.

Back home we resumed our normal non-news writing activities. It is so hard not to sneak a peek at news sites on the computer, but I chanted that I won't check the news sites, computers, I won't, I won't, I wo..

 

Day 2

As much as we wanted to, we did not look at any news. We binged on Netflix. We continued our normal book reading activities, walked the dog and noticed how much the corn had grown in a nearby field. Reading and dog walking are normal activities for us. Not paying attention to news is not.

 

Day 3

We drove to Brienz for a wood carving festival. Because it's a six-hour drive round trip we decided to stay overnight in a small Swiss hotel, overlooking a lake.

The view from the hotel's restaurant terrace with its flag featuring the Swiss Canton flags and views of the lake and mountains was relaxing.

 

Our hotel room had CNN and BBC at numbers 300 and 301, but we didn't look at the English election results. We were sure that Sunak would be packing up at number 10. We can wait, we told ourselves.

 

Instead of discussing, Macron, Biden, Trump, wars and climate change, we talked about the books we were writing and reading, our families, future travel plans along with oohs and ahhs for the unbelievable views of the Alps. Despite all the time we've lived in Switzerland, it was refreshing to once again be gobsmacked by the beauty.

 

The festival was about 20 minutes from the hotel.

 

The smells of freshly cut wood combined with the fresh air. The sculptors were from several European countries. How they can look at wood and see a fox, a phoenix, a woman, child, or even a clothespin hiding inside, than remove the wood that doesn't belong amazes me.

 

 

Day 4

It was equally strange not to be on our laptops, writing away. Mentally, I planned a chapter for my novel Twins and a blog other than this one.

 

We meandered toward home, checking the waterfall at Lauternbrunen.

 

When we  stopped for lunch, we were surprised to see a chateau, not that chateaus are a surprise.

 

Once home we worked on our various writing projects. My hand did not twitch when I saw the TV remotes and I was able to check messages without going to any news or commentary sites.

 

Rick and I never lack for conversation topics, but the elimination of the day's headlines made us concentrate on other topics.

 

I can't say I knew a great peace, but there was a feeling of calm that doesn't happen when we follow the news.

 

Day 5

We gave up on our news blackout one day early to watch CNN's Smerconish and of course were thrilled with the UK result. We heard about Biden's under-wonderful ABC interview. Gaza and the Ukraine were still dire.

 

What did the blackout accomplish? 

 

When we are home, we concentrate on our writing, our dog, the beauty that surrounds us in our little Swiss village, discovering this or that be it historic, cultural, entertainment, natural, etc. It is all those things plus our good friends add color and richness to our lives. When we plunge into the news, the joy of those simple things become dust-covered and we have to dust them off  to feel the same pleasure.

 

The news reminds us that our birth country is in the process of self-destruction, that the alleged leaders around the world are mostly corrupt and don't give diddly damn about the people they serve, that the planet is being hurt by humans (I love George Carlin's line..."Save the planet? The planet will survive. Save ourselves.")  

Wars, fires, and climate disasters are depriving people in too many places of things that I take for granted, a hot shower, enough to eat and a comfortable life.

 

Does knowing about them make anything better? Would sticking my head in the proverbial sand make things better?

 

Probably not.