Dateline 10-6-2017

Alright, I've finally turned off the news, did a little work on my novel rewrite and am starting to feel my mood start to lighten. I can't remember what site it was, quite possibly MySpace, but I used to have "Watching tragedies play out on the new," as one of my guilty pleasures.

This was early in my Doom Porn addiction days when I was too naive to not only not see how negative this form of "entertainment" is for one's psyche but I was also too young to see how these events have long-lasting effects, not just local to where these incidents take place but also to the rest of the world.

For me, it all started with the Challenger explosion because I was ten years old at the time and this was the first, "Do you remember where you were when you heard..." moment. At this point in history, I was both old enough to where there was no need to shelter me from the details and even if I wasn't ready, the news was unavoidable. 

This is when I started to notice how the news has the potential to be more compelling than any suspense film with stories that take weeks, months, and even years to divulge using one piece of evidence at a time with any additional information adding as much to the mystery as it solves.

Next, there were the Rodney King riots where I was now a high school student and pretty much left to myself to sort through information from such an event. As a young teen with no Grand Theft Auto as an outlet for violence, this was more exciting than any Hollywood movie because this was actually real and it felt like anything could happen at any time and I wanted to watch it live.

After that, I was home sick from school when the Waco complex burnt to the ground and got to witness every minute of the event. Where the last two examples were morbidly exciting to me with the suspense stemming from what would either happen or be discovered next, with the Waco incident, mystery was added to the viewing experience as it stopped being about what would happen next and became about what REALLY went down as the official story didn't fully line up with what I saw.

Of course, I wasn't there nor was I privy to any inside evidence but this did seem to kick off the trend of news making its own mythology at least in the way I was experiencing the world. Up until this point I never even thought to question what the media was selling as true and the idea of doing so was the job of cuckoos who didn't believe the JFK storyline since that was a hot topic of the time following the release of the Oliver Stone movie. 

From that point on everything from O.J. to Oklahoma City, the aftermath and "fact" finding became even more mysterious, suspenseful, and compelling than the actual event itself. Yes, this is a very dark outlook but I can't be the only person to follow the news this way or else there wouldn't be wall to wall coverage varying versions of the truth.

Things got way darker after 9/11 following many trips down a wide range of rabbit holes. I'm not going to delve too deep into my views on this incident but this led to the death of the part of me that viewed news coverage of tragedy as entertainment even though I still tune in to watch.

Following the Trump election, I'm now actively trying to avoid all of the fear porn since now it's coming from every direction even from those who used to insist that any form of questioning official narratives came from those with weak minds. Meanwhile, these new "woke" people refuse to look back and admit that this shit show that we're now involved in didn't magically appear from out of nowhere and that both sides of our forced binary system are responsible for getting us to this point.

For the most part, I've been pretty good and not getting sucked into the fear but this Las Vegas incident was just too big to ignore. Yes, it is a horrible thing and yes, it is much more important than anything dealing with me but no, there is nothing I can do about so I'm much better moving on and continue to heal myself and work on getting myself to a point where I could potentially make a difference in this world.

That's not to say that I have any solutions but let's pretend that I do get my novel to a point where it sells I'd have way more potential to help than sitting in a garage worried about the falling sky while others are fighting over mascots. 

So with that, it's now time to get to work and take advantage my renewed enthusiasm toward working on my projects without being distracted by BREAKING NEWS. To add to my excitement, I also just learned that it's a three day weekend giving me one extra day for myself to focus on what I want to do.

As always, I'll check in tomorrow with another update and look forward to talking to you then.

Sincerely,

The Wicker Breaker