I have decided to switch my internet home page at home and at work from Yahoo! to Google for the time being. I'm doing this to take a hiatus from the news stories Yahoo! displays and to stop obsessing over all the issues I worry about. Homosexuality in particular is quite topical—and obviously quite important to me as a gay man—as LGBT rights struggle to find their place in American and global society, but I'm worn out over the back and forth in the news and commentary. (And God forbid I read the comments on gay news item!) I have thousands of articles and links to articles saved on my computer so that I can read them more closely and "process" them, and sometimes I stay awake late at night just scrolling down the Yahoo! face page and clicking on (and often saving) article after article. It's all just too overwhelming and weighs me down with anxiety and negativity.
I know this sounds like first world apathy and deliberately putting my head in the sand. But I'm not going to be at my best for quite a while, so I need to limit my external stimuli and focus on getting my life into a stronger, more stable place. One of my therapists taught me that I can't help anyone when I'm not emotionally secure and leveled-out, and I can't personally do much about the major problems seen in the news. I try to live as green and as simply as practicable, and I have a cause that I champion. Information overload is actually quite a common problem in the internet age. Dear Abby recently wrote a column about it. Maybe someday in the not-too-distant future, I will be able to get current once again. Then perhaps I can comment on issues of the day in this blog, instead of exclusively focusing on my struggles with sobriety and psychopathology.
