One week down, the rest of my life to go.
As I mentioned in my day six post, I'm not yet using my extra time as well as I hope to. There are still too many news-like reflexes in my behavior, and too much wasting of my extra time.
However, I have done some good stuff: read Of Mice and Men and American Nerd: The Story of My People (how's that for a pair of books?); a fascinating interview with neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran; interesting thoughts from some of the smartest people in the world about their favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation (a recurring theme: "everything is the way it is because it got that way"); and a variety of New Yorker articles. I have more planned, including picking up Borges again, learning some new science, and maybe writing some fiction of my own.
As for news: I've seen and heard few headlines here and there (actually remarkably few, given how ubiquitous the news is turning out to be) but have successfully avoided most of it. I pretty much know nothing about what's been going on for the last week other than Davy Jones dying (from a status post on Facebook).
I miss it and I don't. I do sometimes have a nagging feeling like I may be missing something, but I don't feel the rush to go back to reading the news. The biggest issue is that this whole thing seems temporary, like I'm going to pick the news up after 30 days of an experiment or when Lent ends or something. I'm not (at least that's not the plan). I need to get out of that mindset, or else I will fail. The change needs to be a complete change in lifestyle, so there's not even a chance that I would want to check news. It shouldn't be a question and it shouldn't be an effort. I haven't succeeded to that degree, but that's asking a lot for only one week.
Overall, I give myself a B+. Not bad, but room for improvement.
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