I am no longer reading the news

Living as a foreigner in another country gives you the unique opportunity to live in your own bubble. You can break out of the bubble anytime you like to interact with local people, but you can crawl into your own little haven of peace and stay as long as you like. Especially when you have a lifestyle like mine where you are always on the move and never stay long enough to grow roots. 

When reading the news, you let a whole different world enter that bubble. A world of conflict, war, hunger, inflation, and catchy titles meant to draw you in to read a totally uninteresting article because it lacks all the facts. And when you surf to another newspaper you read the same stuff all over again, from the pen of a different journalist who just copy-pasted it from Reuters.

But the weird thing is when you surf newspapers on the other side of the globe, you read different news, the emphasis is different and facts differ from “news back home”. That confuses me. The war in Ukraine is such an example, totally uninteresting news for the Americas and Asia, because we have our own gas and grain, and we read both sides of the story instead of only the Ukrainian victories and Russian blunders.

The same happened during the pandemic, an event that made me read more and more news until I was kind of addicted. Reading newspapers became a habit. A habit that I dislike, but somehow I can’t stop, but I find it very disuopritve. And it takes away my peace of mind.

So I have decided to not read the news anymore and keep in my little bubble, and ignore the world politics, the hunger, the immigrant crisis, the CO2 goals, and the inflation. For the last one: I realize that even in Mexico prizes do go up, but not as much as in Europe, and although I do get a little less Peso for my Euro and those lesser Peso buy me ess groceries than let’s say a year ago. I can’t change anything about it. I just have to adjust and live with it.

Y9u can’t work around it, it is everywhere, open Twitter, and the trendy topics try to tempt you, followers post news items that catch your eyes, but I have decided not to click anymore. Unless it is for work. I do have to feel into new immigration laws, new tariffs and visa changes every now and then. But even with that, my customers always have the obligation to check just in case I missed something, so I do not have to live right on top of the foreign affairs website, the Immigration pages, and the newsfeeds of local governments.

I want to find my peace of mind again. I realize that although I think I am well informed by reading all those news sites, I am not, for news sites feed you what they crawl, and miss out on so much. And news sites are censured by governments, even in the Western world. You can check that yourself, for the news in Australia is totally different from the news in Europe. For example, in Europe, they did not write about the important G7 meeting that will influence the gas stocks in winter in the northern parts. I read that in an Asian newspaper. But there was nothing in the European news. They want to keep the people happy and prevent unrest I guess.

Well, I must say, for people like me, the criticaster in reading, the overthinker, the question asker, they do a lousy job. For it creates tons of unrest in my heart. I know something is up, but I have no clue what. I am by no means a conspiracy thinker, but in this world, what is happening in Western Europe, all those silent new laws, agreements, and contracts that are being signed, there is something brooding.

I am on the other side of the world, looking through foggy glasses at the news. I realize I miss a lot, but so do the people that actually live in those countries. But they will be the victims I will not. In my current country, they handle things differently, supply chains are different, we do have sunflower oil and gasoline prices only went up 1 peso, electricity bills have not risen nor have the price of gas other than the usual inflation.

And I can worry myself sick over what is happening in Europe, or Asia, but it is no longer my concern. And I cannot influence it. So why bother reading about it.

Yes, I will stick my head in the sand, but at least I will have peace of mind. I emigrated, and I changed my lifestyle to have a more adventurous and more relaxed lifestyle, reading daily news does not complement that.