Inputs

As I float along in my bubble, not only am I careful about physical inputs, but my mental inputs have also changed a lot. I'm spending even more time alone than I used to. Generally I enjoy being alone, but I do need something other than my own thoughts to engage me.

News

I have never been a fan of TV news, dating at least back to college days when Star Trek reruns were on opposite Walter Cronkite. I used to be an NPR junkie. Until I started carting adolescents around in the car, only two buttons on the radio were set, to the two local NPR stations. I have a radio in every room in the house. When I worked, I woke to NPR on the clock radio. Often, I would end up with three spins through the whole Morning Edition cycle, though towards the end of my working life the morning drive would be podcasts from the phone. And of course, All Things Considered on the drive home.

Now, I use the Amazon Echo, because I can say "Computer, play NPR everywhere" and it happens throughout my house. But I actually listen to NPR much less often than I used to. This started in 2017, when I realized I just couldn't stand to listen to certain voices on the radio. This has continued, and I'll turn it off with a crisp "Computer, STOP!" when certain annoying whining voices appear. At 9 am, the local station switches to world news from the BBC, and I've discovered I find many of their hosts also very annoying. It's a style thing. They seem to have a certain supercilious "I know better than you" tone to most people they interview. A common phrasing seems to be, "But isn't it really .... ". So mostly I turn them off, even though intellectually I'd like an independent and more global perspective. If I decide to tune in to radio too late to catch Morning Edition, I sub instead the NPR daily morning podcast, Up First. Again, a verbal command gets it going. They generally pick two top stories and provide a little bit of depth, rather than simply one sentence each on the whole landscape of the day's news. I like hearing the voices in my quiet house. I feel I know these people, they are here so much.

I am a digital subscriber to several newspapers and some magazines. I am happy to pay for full digital access to what I always expected to pay for in hard copy. I pay for the Washington Post and New York Times, which I scan daily in the morning, some times more often during the day. I recently added the Baltimore Sun, because they provide better coverage of Maryland state issues than the Post. I also pay for the Guardian, the New Yorker, and Medium, but I don't look at them daily.  Without paying, Vox is another frequent source. I'll turn to them either for specific articles, or when I'm at loose ends in the afternoon or evening, jonesing for something interesting or stimulating or entertaining.

Blogs and Email Newsletters

I read several types of blogs. Daily, faithfully, I check in directly with my real life friends and their blogs, generally first thing after pouring a cup of coffee. I have a blog reader, Feedly, where a wide variety of entertaining and informative blogs are collected and displayed by my topics: Amusement, Bloggers, Local, Policy, Health, Fitness, Style, Tech, Dogs, Gardening, Sailing. When I run across an interesting blog when surfing, I'll often just go ahead and add it to the reader. If I find there are a huge number of posts I like (TLo, you are fabulous and opinionated, but you could dominate the feed!) or I really want to be sure not to miss something, I'll set up an icon on the ipad screen to jump to it directly. The reader and the direct links work well together - often, formatting and especially pictures don't come through well on the reader on the ipad so I end up going directly anyway.

Some sites or organizations provide email newsletters rather than blogs. I prefer a blog I can go look at on the timing of my choice rather than a push into my email box. In gmail, I filter these newsletters as they come and send them to their own tab, but on the native email app for the iphone and ipad, they are mixed into the feed. So I'm fairly selective in which ones I sign up for.

One blog I'm following a lot right now is Marginal Revolution. Posts are from two libertarian economic professors at George Mason University. I believe in reading things I'm likely to disagree with, to sharpen my own perspectives, as long as they are smart and thoughtful. This is much easier than listening to extraordinarily annoying voices in oversimplified sound bites on broadcast media. And I do disagree with these guys. They are also very thoughtful, though their world-view premises are very different from mine, and  commenters on their posts include a number of racist, misogynist idiots. One of the authors is extraordinarily wide-ranging in his interests (and is generally considered to be a genius, not least by himself). He posts "miscellaneous links" daily, and many of them have nothing to do with policy and are amusing. He led me to a TV show to be listed below.

One of my other favorite blogs is Whatever, by John Scalzi. He sometimes will say something very thoughtful, and always clearly and well expressed, on current events. The rest of the time, it's cats and trivia from his life. He is a science fiction writer, and he provides a platform for other writers with new books to explain the big idea behind the book. This has been an excellent book referral source for me.

I also have a separate email and blog reader set up from my working days, collecting aviation, transportation, and government policy news. I check those out every few days.

Podcasts

My podcasts generally are the same categories as the blogs. They are all one-person commentary style (sometimes with co-hosts, often interviewing someone). No true crime or fiction for me, though I do enjoy podcasts discussing contemporary culture - I was totally wrapped up in three podcasts during the last season of Game of Thrones, and an episode wasn't complete for me until I knew what others were saying. I am pleased Brene Brown has started a podcast - other favorites include Larry Wilmore's Black on the Air and Gretchen Rubin's Happier. When I'm ok with going serious for a bit, I like On the Media, and Ezra Klein (of Vox).

Television

My television viewing is fairly limited. Except for rare binge events that can last six or more hours, it's almost never more than an hour or two, often while eating dinner. Pretty much the only TV I watch real time as it is distributed over cable are home improvement shows. Everything else is streamed. I record The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, Full Frontal, (I love joke TV news) and a couple of network or cable drama shows. I pay for HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, CBS digital. I got Apple TV when I bought a new ipad this year. I will be adding DisneyPlus by July, when Hamilton will be screened. My actual TV is from 2013, and it facilitates HBO, Netflix, and Amazon, but its built-in software doesn't allow the others. I recently figured out I already had an iphone-to-HDMI adapter, so I only needed a new HDMI cable to stream anything from the phone to the TV. This was after investigating chromecast, firestick, AppleTV, and other adapters. The bonus is I can use my Bose headphones with the iphone instead of relying on the TV sound system - it especially helps with accents. (I am moderately hearing impaired and rarely wearing my hearing aids these days.)

On the streaming services, I finished Grace and Frankie, so now my half hour amusements come from Schitt's Creek and Brooklyn 99. With Grey's Anatomy wrapped up, drama is mostly Doctor Who and Star Trek (Picard and Discovery). But my absolute current favorite is Beforeigners from Norway via HBO. The premise is amusing: people from ancient times start to appear in present-day Norway in sufficient numbers over sufficient years to present an immigration issue that challenges the culture. It's neo-nordic-noir; our heroes are a present day troubled and cynical detective and his rookie Viking shieldmaiden partner. There are also some naked men. There are only the six episodes from Season 1 available, but (I hear over the webs) there are many setups for a confounding Season 2 still to come. Highly recommended!

Books

Escapism is the order of the day for my reading. My books come in three forms: hardcopy, e-books, and audio. Until recently, there were fairly clear distinctions between which format I would choose for which types of books. Generally, I limit myself in physical books to big beautiful coffee table or reference books. I have been reading vegetable cookbooks, gardening books, and books on bird behavior, dipping in and out, generally methodically from front to back but sometimes darting around following my current interests. I got a gift subscription to Book of the Month Club for Christmas, and that has brought some hardcover novels into my life.

Mostly I read on the kindle. My library system has a pretty good collection of ebooks and audio books, and that is always where I check first when looking for a book. They have a pretty good hold system there, so if they own a book I want, I'll put in a hold and just wait. Most book choices for me come from referrals - friends, friends on GoodReads, blogs from authors I trust. When I find an author I like, I might read through the whole canon. Usually, I'll set aside some time, late afternoon and evening, to plunge into a good novel. I have the luxury of hours at a time, staying up late to finish if I want.

I take in information differently when listening to an audio book. And generally I listen to books while doing something else - driving, walking, gardening, housework. So I'm my own captive audience while busy, and when the activity stops, I turn off the book no matter what is happening in the book at the time. That steered my listening towards narrative non-fiction and more challenging literary fiction, away from thrillers and exciting fiction where I want to get to a good stopping point. But recently, it turns out some books I want from the library are more readily available in audio format, so I've taken up more purely entertaining reads. With my vertigo and current migrainey period, audio books are way easier to consume. It's also about three times as long to get through a recorded book as reading it myself.

I log all my books on GoodReads, because I like keeping track of things and because I enjoy referrals from my friends there, I figure they might enjoy mine as well. I am a harder grader these days, with a standard three stars requiring something extra to get to four. I only give five stars to something that will stay with me, or for books written by authors that are friends of mine. (Yes, I can be dishonest in their favor.) There is a "roll" from GoodReads of my books on the side of this blog, if you are looking at it on the computer full web interface.

From the library, I've read and listened to a bunch of light fantasy and science fiction by Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold. But I'm currently in a mystery mode. The absolute best author I've come across in years is Louise Penny, who has written (so far) sixteen mystery novels set in Quebec. I'm listening to them as they become available from the library, which is out of order. As the story and characters do progress from one book to the next, it's a little odd out of order, so I sat down with Wikipedia and have been keeping track of what happens where. From the same friend that turned me on to Penny, I've got several other authors I'm following. Ann Cleeves has not one, but two, series that have been made into British tv series - Vera Stanhope and Shetland. I may go for the TV shows when I'm done with the many books.

Social Media

There is a reason this is last. It really isn't my thing, currently. Here I lump Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Each of them gives that little reward, "OOOHH! Something new!" when I touch the icon on the screen, but I've discovered their ability to entertain me is less than the time I have available to be entertained. I find myself checking them, and being disappointed.

Not many friends post personally meaningful things on Facebook these days, but just enough do that I check it a couple of times of day. Most posts in my feed come from groups I have joined. I do stay close to a couple of the groups and I have found them useful and supportive when I've posted there. For example, there was some very useful and practical vertigo advice. When I worked, I was not Facebook friends with a single person who worked where I did. I now am friends with those from my work I actually like and want to be in touch with. This has caused many more people to send friend requests to me - a whole different set of people. These come in two camps: those I barely knew at work, who I suspect are wanting professional connections, and those I knew and liked, though casually. The first set I just turn down, with no regrets. We could connect on LinkedIn. The second set, people I knew only casually but liked, sometimes I leave the requests sitting out there, not sure if I'm going to respond.

On Instagram, I follow a fair number of celebrities and fun sites. (BagDogs is a favorite - pictures of dogs in bags on the NY subways, except they have decided to stay home right now.) I also have some friends who post on the 'Gram way more than Facebook. A bunch of the folks I met on my two retreats in Utah are "influencers" so they are posting Instagram stories pretty often. I enjoy Instagram quite a bit, but the content is worth about thirty minutes a day, my devices tell me.

Of these social media, I am least often on twitter - I go days without looking. But when I do, I fall into a hole. There is always something new on twitter, and clicking through to follow threads and replies can be entertaining. But it is not very rewarding. I rarely, rarely, reply. And I'm not sure I've ever done an actual, original tweet.

So there you have it. I'm using my IOS devices to track my use of them, with a goal to spending more time on things other than constantly refreshing looking for something that will give me the thrill of actual entertainment. I'm not bored, you're bored! Or you wouldn't have read this far!