Dear Meteor readers,

I hope you are enjoying your weekend. I’m currently on my way to upstate New York: and my sunscreen is on but my phone is, shockingly, off. I like to unplug on the weekends—stay off social media, disable my alerts, and do something with my hands. (Have you even lived if you haven’t taken a Saturday afternoon nap atop unwanted tote bags you found while organizing a closet?)

Why am I sharing so much? Because news fatigue is real—and it took me years to figure that out. It’s been a tough week news-wise—we know that—and so for today writer Megan Reynolds gives us some reflections on what it looks like to disengage from the news cycle even when the world is on fire.

We’re curious to know how you unplug—and whether you do. So before you stash your phone, answer our reader survey on the subject.

But first, a little bit of news—to read at your convenience, and only when you’re ready.

From the woods,

Samhita Mukhopadhyay

WHAT’S GOING ON

It’s not okay in OK: Legislators in Oklahoma have passed *the* strictest anti-abortion bill in the country—banning abortion at “fertilization.” The bill also would allow citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone else they suspect has knowingly “aided or abetted” in abortion care. Gov. Kevin Stitt—who literally vowed to make Oklahoma the most anti-abortion state in the country—will likely sign this bill, meaning it will go into effect ASAP. Retire, bitch. The rest of us can donate to the Oklahoma Roe Fund here.

Feeding babies is apparently controversial: The House passed two bills earlier this week to help support families during the terrifying shortage of baby formula across the United States. One of the bills allows families to use money from a federal program to purchase formula. The other, apparently more controversial, bill would give 28 million dollars to the FDA to prevent this clusterfuck from happening again. Sounds great, right? Too bad 192 Republicans voted against it! I can’t think of a less controversial issue than babies need food and we should feed them, but ok. Here are some resources if you are trying to find formula or support a family that is.

AND:

• Jill Filipovic says we are on the precipice of an anti-feminist backlash. She’s right and you should read this prescient piece. But is it a backlash or is it just misogynist business as usual? Discuss.

• Congratulations to Rihanna on the birth of her baby!! Fenty for infants when?

• Anna Delvey is starting a law firm. That’s not the punchline to a joke; that is an actual thing.

• Don’t miss this searing, personal essay from Irin Carmon over at New York Magazine about what happens to the body during pregnancy and childbirth, and why those realities are absent from public discourse on motherhood and choice.

• If you’ve been seeing a lot of strange videos in your FYP or explore page regarding Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there’s a (very creepy) reason for that!

PERMISSION TO UNPLUG

There’s a Better Way to Manage the Unrelenting News Cycle

Maybe you feel guilty tuning out, but a little breather could make all the difference. 

BY MEGAN REYNOLDS

ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATION BY UZO NGWU

Every morning for the past four and a half years, I would wake up, make coffee, and settle in for a day of imbibing the trials and tribulations of the world at large, via Twitter, an overflowing RSS reader, and the Slack channel of the feminist website where I worked. The purview of the website was large—covering everything from the Republican war on abortion to Bennifer 2.0—which meant that the possibilities for content were endless. I was dialed in and it was impossible to separate my leisure time from my work time. (RIP to the late-night Slack messages I sent to myself full of stray links, TikToks, tweets, and other digital ephemera, accompanied by hastily-written notes that, when viewed in the light of day, made little to no sense.)

I was living the dream, especially for a writer–I could cover whatever I wanted, as long as it was in the news and I had something to say about it. With each passing catastrophe, the pressure to say something of note about current events became too much.

Working in digital media straight through the pandemic planted the seeds for what I now understand to be burnout. As we all retreated to our homes, my coworkers and I were still tethered to work and each other through our shared Slack. There was a comfort in knowing that we were going through this together. Being plugged into the news cycle and producing work felt like the only way to manage the uncertainty of the world at large. And there was a certain pride attached to it—that even in the face of an unprecedented global health emergency and a massive shift in perspective, I was able to produce something that was informing people and possibly helping them in their time of need.

But I was exhausted, cranky, and clenched my jaw so much that sometimes, I bit down on a Popsicle so that I wouldn’t grind my teeth. Occasionally, I burst into tears over the smallest of slights.

When I left my job as a writer at the end of 2021, I immediately detached from the news cycle. In a way, I buried my head in the sand out of necessity, in part for my own survival. Suddenly, I was afforded the privilege of simply having an opinion and keeping it to myself. For a period of time, I stopped reading each individual morsel of news that crossed my path, be it in a text message or on Twitter or Facebook, and chose to use the internet for activities I’d previously abandoned, like online shopping and watching hours of beauty tutorials on YouTube.

Playing dumb in this way felt unusual at first. But I realized I had managed to fully disconnect when a friend texted me about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars (I’d stopped watching the telecast before it happened.) That this friend came to me with this news instead of the other way around meant that I’d almost gotten free. “I can’t believe I knew this before you,” my friend told me. Neither could I, but it felt great.

And it felt freeing. Watching television or reading a book, two activities that had become work, also, became leisure activities once more. But unplugging myself from that particular matrix was difficult, because a small part of me enjoyed the hustle and the bustle, as damaging as it was to my mental health. I was essentially trauma-bonded to the colleagues I’d worked with, and they were now my friends. For a few weeks after I left that job, my brain still churned with ideas and stray thoughts that could’ve been essays; instead of turning these into something bigger, I simply texted my friends, relishing in what I believe normal people call “conversation.”

I’m not saying that ignoring the atrocities that have become our new normal is a solution, in fact, it’s impossible to ignore these things because they take such a toll on our lives. But there is deep value in taking a moment between crises to breathe.  An act as small as condensing the constant barrage of notifications from various news sources into an easily-digestible summary that is now delivered to my phone once a day, drastically lowered my stress levels and still allowed me to be informed rather than overloaded with information.

I have learned that this is what a boundary feels like: the invisible line that exists between my feelings and something else, a line that exists to protect me from harm. Erecting that boundary has made it easier to engage with the news now, especially given the current moment. And while setting boundaries for what I consume sounds simplistic, it is an incredibly difficult thing to do in the midst of my reproductive rights and my very identity coming under constant fire. For some disengaging is merely a privilege, but for others, it can be the only way to get through a day. Or even save us from utterly losing hope.

Now that I no longer feel the need to respond publicly to everything that happens in the world, I can actually digest what is happening, and direct my energy toward the causes, issues, and concerns that matter. But it was only after I allowed myself to take that space that I felt I had the energy and the brainpower to really, deeply care again.

TELL US HOW YOU UNPLUG 

Disengaging from the news can be difficult. I, for one, have logged an embarrassing amount of hours on my phone this last week googling, “what is the difference between colonization and free association.” How do I disconnect? I rollerskate at a local park. It’s really hard to think about anything else when you’re rolling down a hill at 20 MPH.

We’d love to know how you find a slice of peace during These Times™. Click the button below to share your tips with us and we’ll feature some of your responses in our next newsletter!

xoxo,

Shannon Melero

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