Splendid Isolation

A very clever DJ on the radio this morning played Pete Yorn’s version of Splendid Isolation (originally a Warren Zevon song). It seems apropos, after this week’s election results.

David Remnick’s An American Tragedy, from The New Yorker, is a well-written (but fairly depressing) assessment of the situation. Tim Urban’s It’s Going to Be Okay is a bit more hopeful.

Joshua Benton, at Nieman Lab, has written a good overview of the media forces at play in this year’s election. I’ve been reassessing my own consumption of media, though I think I’m probably going to keep reading and watching the same things, for the foreseeable future: The NY Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and PBS NewsHour for “real” news, and The Daily Show, Colbert, and Samantha Bee for “funny” news. I’m thinking about cutting back a bit though, especially in the short term, just to keep from going crazy.

I’m thinking a little bit about religion too, but I’m not at all sure what to do on that front. I think that the Catholic Church is going in the right direction, so that’s a ray of hope.

And a little escapism isn’t a bad thing. (I’m re-watching some of the Harry Potter films this week, for instance. And reading some comics. And listening to some Doctor Who audio dramas.)

And some cosmic perspective might help too:

(I don’t usually try to embed multiple tweets in a blog post, so this may look weird. But hopefully it works ok.)

I’m also thinking about doing something that I haven’t done in a long time: create a mind map. I’ve had a lot of thoughts going through my head about positive things I can do over the next four years, both to stay sane and upbeat, and to help others. But I really need to organize those thoughts. This NY Times Op-Ed piece by the Dalai Lama has given me some additional stuff to think about, but I’m really not sure where to go with it.

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