Holding On

 I spent nearly all of my professional career working with the news media. 

I was not a reporter or a journalist, but I worked as a public affairs officer for a large non-profit organization in the San Francisco Bay area. Then I went to work as a public affairs officer for NASA. Yes, that NASA, the space agency. 

All told, I worked in the news business for some 25 years. Part of that time, I was the NASA public affairs representative in Moscow. I covered space shuttle launches at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I represented the space agency, with an emphasis on the human spaceflight program, at my NASA center in California. I was the voice of Mission Control Houston for a few years. I represented NASA's public affairs office from the Russian mission control center.  I wrote an issued news releases. I did interviews with members of the news media. I moderated news conferences. I arranged interviews with the NASA scientists and administration for the news media.

You could say that working with the news is in my blood. And because I travel overseas extensively, I also have a great interest in news coming out of the numerous countries I have visited. 

So it isn't easy for me to refuse to follow the criminality,  chaos and a corruption taking place in the United states. Following the news is painful, and so is not following the news. 

It should come as no great surprise that I follow, often to my psychological detriment, what the current American regime is doing to this country. And I suppose it shouldn't come as a big surprise that despite my history on the fringes of journalism and my addiction to following news both national and international, there are many times when I have to step away.

I watch local and national news each day for a total of one hour. Then I switch to non-news channels. I shut my phone off around 7 p.m. so I'm not tempted to follow the news online. I don't use my computer after early afternoon. 

Unfortunately, it seems that the greed and insanity and warmongering of the current regime aren't going to end anytime soon. So I will continue to do what I am now doing. I will limit my exposure to the news. I will continue to seek out ways of dealing with the stress, such as writing, reading and photography. And I'll keep my fingers crossed that this Insanity will end before this country is totally destroyed.