Last week two of my magazine subscriptions sent new issues to my Kindle while a third delivered its latest to my mailbox. I’ve barely looked at them. I’m not busier than the week or the month before. I woke up and went to bed at roughly the same time throughout the week. But by Wednesday my concentration was shot, and it was all I could do to meet the minimum demands of my job, not to mention function as an adult for my family. Every time I tried to tuck in to an article, I got distracted before I could finish.
There is a cumulative load being placed on all of our consciousness day-by-day. The pandemic and the election, not to mention any particulars we may each be dealing with. We are all taking on this load without really noticing it, until something happens that loosens our grip on the whole thing. It’s no coincidence that Wednesday is when I hit a wall last week; I watched all of Tuesday night’s debate, then I spent Wednesday morning listening to commentary about it. By noon Wednesday, my attention and emotional energy were depleted.
I want to pay attention and stay engaged, but I also want to make my family dinner and contribute to what my colleagues and I are working on. I need a meter.
YoRocko! 
Please let me know when you find a meter, Rocky. I’d like one, too. One way I try to thin out my news exposure is trying to limit pandemic and election news to reading the paper or one web site, plus listening to the radio for a limited time. I remember working for a chain of small newspapers, one of which was all entertainment news. The editor of that paper had a pet phrase in his reviews; “We watched (or listened to) this so you don’t have to.” I try to keep that in mind: Some people are being paid to cover the election and medical news, whether bare facts or opinions. I will seek what they have done, and until they’ve done it, I will do something else.
Thank you for surfacing this phenomenon, Rocky. I get it.
Thank you so much, Rocky. It encourages me to continue with much more confidence as I pick and choose articles to read in the newspapers, magazines and literally “practice” to read my choices completely. I found I was reading a paragraph here and there and not remembering the details and becoming more and more anxious.