It wasn’t until 9/11, when the planes took out the World Trade Center Towers, that I began to understand that New York City was a big deal in the US. Up until that point in my life, I never really thought much about New York.
I was 33 years old and working out at the gym when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. I remember people at my gym freaking out while staring at the television sets. At the time, I assumed it was an accident. I figured my fellow gym goers were so upset because many of them had relocated to North Miami from NYC.
I was wrong about the accident, obviously.
Up until that point, it had never occurred to me that NYC was the epicenter of the US economy and a primary symbol of US patriotism.
In the 20+ years since then, I was responsible for selling technology solutions across the entire US. I learned about a number of metros that accounted for 90% of our revenues. These included:
- NYC
- San Francisco/Silicon Valley
- Seattle
- Washington DC
- Chicago
I traveled for business to these cities and others I only “knew” from TV, movies and books including:
- Los Angeles
- Orlando
- Newark
- Atlanta
- Dallas
- Houston
I lived in a few others:
- Pittsburgh
- Miami & Ft. Lauderdale
- Raleigh
What I notice now is how most of these cities dominate news coverage. Because they are economic centers with large populations they tend to make the news. A few are media and entertainment centers too – attracting both media talent and news coverage.
As an early retiree, I no longer have to travel for business. Other than my 2 month “life on the road” experience in 2019, I haven’t travelled more than 30 miles for my home in Raleigh in 6 years.
My life is small, local and quiet – just the way I like it.
I mention all of this because I was thinking about the recent catastrophic wildfires in LA and the surrounding areas. Stories about these fires, the properties destroyed, lives lost and estimated billions of dollars required to recover are dominating the news.
I don’t really need to know about this.
Just like I don’t need to know about:
- NYC’s subway crime and immigrant problems.
- Chicago’s gun violence and murder stats
- Silicon Valley’s layoffs
- Houston’s Flooding and Hurricane Issues
- South Florida’s Flooding and Hurricanes
- and on…and on…and on…
None of these impact me personally. While I may have once known people who live in these places, we are no longer in touch.
Of course I feel badly for the people who are dealing with hardship, crisis and tragedy. That’s only human.
Equally as obvious is that there’s not much I can do to help them.
I have deliberately chosen to focus my efforts on helping those in front of me (including people, dogs and cats).
It makes me question why I even read the news at all.
I think I do it out of habit, curiosity and boredom. I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason to make myself feel bad every day.
I do fight this.
At times I’ll go on a “no news” break. Also, since 2016, I’ve purposely skipped reading many articles that focus on dissecting what Trump said or Tweeted and trying to parse out “what he actually means”.
I generally skip most articles about what Congress says and does – especially anything that focuses on the attention mongers.
Lately, I’ve been skipping articles about the problems in “blue cities”.
Perhaps it’s time to go on another full news hiatus altogether.