More Bad News

Every time I turn on a screen, there's more bad news.

We have a rule in our house that we can only watch the news for 15-minutes a day. We get what we need. We learn the updates. We shut it off, unplug it from the wall and try to find a way to slow dance through the rest of this applesauce.

I wish I could say the same thing about the phone.

I found my high school cell phone last week, buried underneath a pile of dusty yearbooks and graduation chords. I called my wireless provider and asked what I'd have to do to reactivate it. What if I didn't walk around with a phone that had email, social media, text messaging that takes your thumbs only seconds to type?

Why?

There's constantly so much news. Three minutes after opening my eyes this morning, I learned of more people passing away from the virus, a favorite NJ bagel shop burning to the ground, emails with projects canceled and clients putting things on hold. It felt almost impossible to find the oomph to get out of bed.

So I called and the woman fell silent.

"Let me get this straight," she said, confusion pulsing through her nervous laugh. "You want to reactivate a Motorolla device from 2004?"

"I just want the bad news to stop."

I wasted her time with my stress, my fears, my uncertainty. She calmed me down by saying something I guess I desperately needed to hear.

"You're not the first person to call with the same idea."

For my plan to work, I'd have to visit a store. I'd have to buy a new SIM card. I'd probably have to get a new phone (the one from high school has extreme water damage from dropping it in the ocean. I forgot about that). I put this plan on hold.

Instead, I made a new rule for the house. No news before 8am. No emails before 9am. No social media before 10am. No more bad news only. We must find a way to find the good in all of this. All before we get out of bed in the morning. That's a plan that doesn't require leaving the house.

Why not give it a whirl?

-Jen Glantz