A Week Without News -- Day Two

I'm halfway through Day Two of my seven days sans media. Interestingly, today I'm reminded that part of my reason for doing this is that I spend way too much time reading and listening to mainstream media (I'm my own worst offender). This came to mind as I settled into my work week and began my normal routine of browsing select websites. It was then that it occured to me that three of my five standard sites are news-based entities, namely 9news.com, CNN.com and ESPN.com.

The other part of my typical day includes reading the newspaper while I'm in the bathroom. Without even thinking, I reached for the paper and had just finished reading the recap of Letterman's Top Ten when I realized my folly. NO NEWS DUDE!!! I knew going into this that I'd have to be extremely conscious of my actions, because again, the news is such a part of our culture that I just automatically reached for it without thinking about my quest.

Fortunately, I stopped suddenly and consequently heightened my defenses. The result thus far has been that I didn't unconsciously select 9news or CNN or ESPN from my browser, so I have no clue as to what "important" things are going on locally, nationally, globally or in sports. Even with My Yahoo!, I've avoided the articles, although like yesterday with the newspaper incident, I couldn't completely avoid the headlines. I did in fact catch glimpses of a headline that had the words "Rice", "Hezbollah", "Lebanon" and "Israel" in it. Again, this is another nice thing about avoiding the news -- I didn't read the article, yet those four words right there tell me everything I need to know. I'm guessing the article had something to do with Rice being in the area, performing her diplomatic duty of trying to smooth things over. Anything important I missed?

Stay tuned!