Friday, March 27, 2009

Noise, noise, noise!

If these words sound familiar to you, it's probably because you, too, have seen "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas."

Lately, the Grinch's line about the racket from toys keeps striking me as applicable to the overload of information we're all facing.

I love social media, and am a self-proclaimed all around media geek. But lately, it's become too much.

I'm on Twitter, and really like it, both for my reporting and just keeping up on the world. But between that, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and the blogs I read for work, and the words I consume for work ... well, at the end of the day, my brain feels like plain ol' mush.

I find I'm more tired that usual, and mentally tired at that. Like the very act of picking up the phone seems difficult, and that I crave time to zone out more.

For example, when my dear husband was interested in hearing about my day last night after I got home late from an event, I found myself increasingly annoyed that he wouldn't let me just watch "ER" (yes, I'm one of the seven or so people who still watch it. Sue me.).

I turned it off, but I can't help but think I might not be so apt to lose myself in fictional emergency rooms and would be more engaging to talk to if I wasn't glued to a constant stream of information all day.

I say all this with no solution, of course, but as an observation. It's a way that media is changing, evolving, and it won't go back. We'll all figure out how to manage it in our own way. But for me, right now, it just all sounds way too noisy, and it's drowning out the sound of my real, and important, life.

1 comment:

Joe said...

You know, if you keep this post in the top slot long enough, it'll be timely for Christmas 2009.
Talk to us, Jen. . .we miss you.