Away From The World

I have inadvertently cocooned myself away from the world.

It seems to have happened accidentally - and by accidentally, I mean I simply ran out of time during the normal course of affairs.  Something had to give - and so, it was my tracking of the ongoing events of the world.  It started off with not tracking the news of the world, both from aggregator sites and from things such as Twitter.  It slowly extended through Facebook until it reached the circle of blogs that I follow - every day, getting smaller.

My radio has remained in the "not on news" arena, with either CDs or podcasts or even just silence to accompany my drive.  My mailbox, having been cleared of most daily inputs, leaves me little to know about the world at large.

With a little more effort, I could be an island in the midst of an urban stream.

Am I particularly happier?  Not that I can tell - a lack of knowledge of the outside world's goings on is not enough to generate a better life per se.  And certainly the occasional bits that have filtered in leave me none too sad that I have been missing out.

But I can say this:  not knowing what is going on has lead to a greater lack of existential nervousness in my life.  I do not know what is going on in the world, and can therefore not stress about it.  Certain that time and energy of the stress has been absorbed by wedging my life in a little bit more around the edges of where I live.

And that, arguably, is better no matter how  you look at it.