Coronavirus Chronicles: News embargo
Day 6 was productive, less stressful, and even a bit enjoyable. I didn't sleep that well again last night, and I'm still paranoid I might be running a slight temperature -- to the point I told Lori to hide the thermometer (I was never higher than 99 degrees). The social distancing is still in progress, and were making do the best we can, which, honestly, has been somewhat good.
What made today better was I declared a personal news embargo. I determined that I was looking at too much news about the crisis, visiting websites with updated case numbers too often, and stumbling into other people's struggles on social media more than I need to. I'm not dismissing friends' real need to communicate and vent during this crazy time, but I'm allowed to not expose myself to it in an effort to keep my own stress under wraps.
I was planning on attempting this yesterday, but then the earthquake hit and it was difficult for the journalist in me to not want to know more. Today, I was more successful. I deleted the icons that go to the Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune, and Facebook apps from my phone. I turned off notifications from those sources and deleted emails with digest updates. I didn't visit any potentially informative websites, save an accidental, kind of force-of-habit, typing in of cnn.com -- and even then I didn't linger or closed the tab before it could load.
The result is I'm feeling less anxious. Lori and I went for a long walk, and though we discussed what was going on, we didn't quite dwell on it and felt satisfied we were doing our part and staying sane enough. I went for another walk with the dog later in the early evening, before it got dark. Lori made a sort of delicious beef stir fry for dinner, and we all played Codenames afterward. And we talked to my dad tonight.
I'm still way tired and really need eight hours of sleep tonight. I think a restful night will counter the hypochondriac-elevated body temp that I probably don't have anyway. I haven't had any even semi-close contact with anyone since Saturday, and if the window for symptoms is 14 days max (and the average is five, so that's already passed), we're just about halfway home. The social distancing I can handle. The idea of the virus itself should be manageable, too, but I'll feel more at ease in a week.
Until then, I'm going to keep up the news embargo. What I didn't know today didn't hurt me.
What made today better was I declared a personal news embargo. I determined that I was looking at too much news about the crisis, visiting websites with updated case numbers too often, and stumbling into other people's struggles on social media more than I need to. I'm not dismissing friends' real need to communicate and vent during this crazy time, but I'm allowed to not expose myself to it in an effort to keep my own stress under wraps.
I was planning on attempting this yesterday, but then the earthquake hit and it was difficult for the journalist in me to not want to know more. Today, I was more successful. I deleted the icons that go to the Washington Post, Salt Lake Tribune, and Facebook apps from my phone. I turned off notifications from those sources and deleted emails with digest updates. I didn't visit any potentially informative websites, save an accidental, kind of force-of-habit, typing in of cnn.com -- and even then I didn't linger or closed the tab before it could load.
The result is I'm feeling less anxious. Lori and I went for a long walk, and though we discussed what was going on, we didn't quite dwell on it and felt satisfied we were doing our part and staying sane enough. I went for another walk with the dog later in the early evening, before it got dark. Lori made a sort of delicious beef stir fry for dinner, and we all played Codenames afterward. And we talked to my dad tonight.
I'm still way tired and really need eight hours of sleep tonight. I think a restful night will counter the hypochondriac-elevated body temp that I probably don't have anyway. I haven't had any even semi-close contact with anyone since Saturday, and if the window for symptoms is 14 days max (and the average is five, so that's already passed), we're just about halfway home. The social distancing I can handle. The idea of the virus itself should be manageable, too, but I'll feel more at ease in a week.
Until then, I'm going to keep up the news embargo. What I didn't know today didn't hurt me.
Comments