I can’t keep up.

I feel, in many ways, that I’m at a crossroads. I really feel a real break from my old, younger life. Jeremy and I (and Edda) are settling into our new(ish) empty-ish nest and post-pandemic routine. Sometimes I think we are super boring – but someone reminded me that super-exciting is not good either. One of the things I really want to let go of is 1) social media and 2) watching any TV/movies. I did not log into Facebook on my new computer. I thought I was a low consumer of Facebook, but it turns out I did check on it throughout the day on my old laptop computer – but now I can tell I’m really off of it because Jeremy will come into the room and say – did you see what happened to so-and-so? And I’ll say – no, I didn’t. And then he’ll show me his Facebook feed. I think it’s ok not to know, but I waver. I do relax by scrolling through instagram – which is only hobbies – almost no friends, but I can tell I get too invested in people’s lives I don’t know. The movies/TV thing is also surprisingly hard for me to give up. I cancelled our Netflix account right before Squid Games came out and I did feel like I was missing out. But I didn’t resubscribe to watch it. It’s mostly this feeling like – well, I didn’t see Mad Men/Sopranos/Breaking Bad/Keeping up with the Kardashians, but I could always make time to watch it. But I think I want to close this door. To acknowledge that I won’t ever watch these things. One of the things about closing this door is saying, yes, that I’m out-of-touch with cultural happenings and I will always be this way. And my deepest-darkest thing that I want to give up is the news. I don’t want to read the news anymore. But this somehow feels like I’m giving up what it means to be a responsible citizen. I’ve never been a very good news keeping up person, but to let it go is to drop into the category of being the uninformed. Be an informed voter! Be an informed citizen! everyone cries. But everyone is so loud. So opinionated. I no longer want to do this. I just want to live my life.