it has only become possible to be aware of the real-time happenings of humanity around the world during my lifetime. the phrase that comes to mind is "information overload". you live in unprecedented times. give yourself a break from the firehoses, and give yourself a break from the self-criticism for not knowing how to deal with the information overload.

@djsundog I really associate the phrase "information overload" with the six months after I graduated college and the studio apartment I moved into. I only connected my little black and white TV to the cable because I was hoping it would work as an antenna but I discovered it hadn't been turned off.

I'd never lived anywhere with cable before and suddenly I had CNN. The aftermath of Tianenmen Square was still being understood. The Bay Area got hit by the Loma Prieta earthquake. The Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union collapsed. I watched a firing squad kill the Dictator of Romania. I'd get home from one of my two jobs and immediately turn it on to see what I'd missed.

And then one day I picked up my phone to make a call. But it didn't go through. Instead I found myself in this amazing liminal telephone netherworld where I could hear a dozen or more conversations, all happening at once, against a background of electronic beeps. Just as I'd start to follow a couple sentences of one call it would vanish and its place be taken by another call. I sat listening to it for half an hour while trying to figure out a way to route the signal into my four-track cassette but couldn't get it to work.

Having my first taste of 24-hour news was as earthshaking as the events it was covering. And that phone call became my personal metaphor for what it felt like.

Then I got a dial up modem...