The Great News Break of 2011

So sometime around the start of fall, I switched from MTS to Shaw.

Saved a lot of money. Lost a lot of channels. Among them: CNN and almost anything associated with educational content.

Besides, I’ve been distracted. And my distractions have taken me on a looping course away from the news cycle of the moment.

On Twitter, I won a subscription to The New Yorker, the apple of my reading eye. I don’t think I’ve yet read a single issue straight through. I used to hit up U.S. political blogs several times a day. Now I haven’t seen the front end of Talking Points Memo for weeks.

I’ve decided to call it the Great News Break of 2011.

Why? Just burned out, I suppose. Or just ready to define myself some other way.

The odd thing: the less international news I consume, the happier I’ve become. Use me as your test subject, but I tell you true: I am a far more cheerful person now that I am, just slightly, in the dark.

There is nothing, right now, that gives me more pleasure than “Nope!” being the answer to the question: “Did you hear about what Herman Cain said?” I have begun to suspect I may, in fact, be a better person for not knowing this. In years past, knowing that the Herman Cains of the world were saying would keep me up at night.

Now, I sleep like a baby, ensconced in a bed of fluffy and frivolous things.

I’m sure I’ll be back to it shortly. But like I said, I’ve been distracted. By hockey and birthdays and new friends and old haunts. By big ideas and new opportunities. By my trip back to my favourite place in the world, for which I leave on Tuesday night.

In the meantime, my blog collects dust. That’s okay. Everything needs a rehabilitation phase.