No wonder you’re having nightmares. You’re always watching the news. — Total Recall

You may have noticed that I’m doing fewer “News Roundup” posts in the past few months.  I still read the news, but I’m enjoying it less and less.  Where I used to find current events interesting, now I find them depressing.  I don’t think that the world is doing any worse now than it has been doing for the past decade or so. Rather, I think it’s that I’m reaching saturation.  I know I’m in a bad place when I start to find things in the news comical, even if they’re not funny in any good way.

This is a challenge to me.  I think it’s one of the duties of a good citizen to stay informed about what is going on.  This keeps me in the know about what my elected representatives are up to and what challenges they face.  If I follow my instincts and just throw my hands up, I let myself and the country down in a small way.  Walking away from news sites and just looking at videos of kittens and college-age doofuses makes me less effective as a voter and citizen, and I owe myself, my friends, and my children more.

In short, the news is, to me, becoming depressingly gray and repetitive, but it’s important that I work through that and keep myself informed.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn away and ignore the world.  Some jackass has to be here to hoot and throw poo when politicians and the less than bright do something stupid, and that jackass might as well be me.