With the horrific news of the last couple weeks and the anniversary of 9/11, I’m doing my best to focus on my own life and not “doom scroll” the frightful headlines. Sports is a perfect respite for doing that.
It’s the first full summer that I haven’t been battling any injuries. Two years ago, I was a wreck with a pulled achilles and back pain. Now, I’m moving more, eating better, and I’ve lost some weight. I might be in the best shape I’ve been since retiring 9+ years ago.
Related: Stretching Into Summer (2023)
This week has been pickleball (2x), tennis, golf at the range, and golf on the course tomorrow. A Tuesday “Bikes & Brews” ride got interrupted by rain. In the evening, we’ve had 5 nights of NFL football (and some MLB baseball) in the last 8 nights.
When I was working, it was easy to ignore news events by focusing on work. In retirement, you need to be a little more proactive in finding something to focus on. It’s too easy to sit online or watch the 24/7 TV news. I recall that my high school Sociology teacher said that retired people often have a very negative view of the world from watching too much TV. I can believe that’s true and will try to not get too caught up in it.
Related: Early Retirement and the 24 Hour News Cycle (2016)
What activities are keeping you from doomscrolling right now?
Image: ChatGPT 5
MrFireStation 
I was fortunate enough to have parents who were middle of the road people who did not care about what other people thought or sensationalism. I inherited those traits.
I find television news and other types of click bait to be that, something that will be a complete waste of time which adds nothing to me psychological well being.
There are other things that get my ire which at the moment are vendor sponsored conferences masquerading as educational events. This also goes with the new professional organizations which are minority association of X industry. Those “separate” organizations are a drain on professional organizations which are challenged in remaining to exist due to the vendor sponsored meet up groups
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Agree that much of the headlines is clickbait that doesn’t really affect our lives. My son forwarded me a study several years ago that noted the average American sees 5,000 news stories a year. The author asked how many of those stories actually impacted any major decision in your life. For most people: zero.
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You have to be highly selective where you spend your time. Some Social Media is worse than the worst of the news.
On the sports front, Go Pack Go!
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Some social media is bad, some is very good. Like anything, you get what you settle for. Hopefully the GB Packers are focused on the games ahead and not the headlines. Pack are off to a great start!
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I would like to chime in with a single comment about the horrific news that has happened recently. All the murders were solved very quickly because the perps were caught in the act by video cameras. After the Mollie Tibbets murder in small town Iowa and how it was solved by the local police reviewing Ring cameras, I immediately decided I have to have video cameras around the parameter of my house.
When taking firearms ‘safety’ class, the instructor asked what are you going to do when someone comes bursting through your front door. The instructor was a former swat and homicide detective for LAPD. He said nothing was worse than investigating a homicide of a poor soul who lost his life because he couldn’t open his gun safe or take their pistol safety off because they were in panicked. That got me thinking, I live in rural area and advance notice of someone coming down my driveway at 3:00 AM provides precious time to be prepared. My hypervigilant Doberman will also have a warm welcome for strangers coming to our front door. Once he sees that we are okay with the person, he immediately stands down.
I received a call today from the property manager of a very wealthy neighbor. He asked me what I am doing for video cameras. I told him you need to have hard wired cameras with a server installed on your premises. It must have backup power. Burglars know to jam your WIFI cameras. The unexpected thing that has happened since installing my video surveillance is that my Doberman learned by himself to recognize the alerts coming from the video cameras and goes to the door to do a meet and greet. My female Rottweiler is not quite as hyper or vigilant, but is there to assist the Doberman and she has the jaws of life.
If you are concerned about security, get video hard wired surveillance cameras. They are cheap and solve crimes. You would expect that the bad guys would figure out by now you will get caught because of the cameras. I had a dispute with a delivery service who did damage to my property and their loss department was pushing backed. It is amazing how sending the loss department a video of their driver damaging my property got them to agree to pay for the damage they caused. This single incident paid for the entire system.
Be safe! My thought is, whatever you are prepared for doesn’t happen. What you are not prepared for happens are the worst possible time.
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Good points. We have hardwired video cameras all around both of our places. My phone gives me alerts when anyone gets to our driveway or into our back yard. We have lights that also come on to make sure we get a good image. Happily, we’ve never had an issue, but some of our neighbors have.
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Sounds like you have a good setup that is similar to mine. The lights also alert potential burglars that you have video surveillance and might explain why you haven’t had problems like some of your neighbors. They target soft targets.
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Nothing “soft” about one of my neighbors 🙃. He’s a tough guy I wouldn’t want to mess with!
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Looking on the net and not finding lots of “doom” is tough!
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Yes – they know that’s what our “lizard brain” is conditioned to watch! 🙃
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Read books. That’s what I do…
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I’m a bit too ADHD for books, but I have been doing an audiobook this summer. I’m up to hour 33 of a 35 hour biography of Walt Disney.
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Glad you found that you can handle audio books.
I’m always on the lookout for non-fiction to read, so if you don’t mind me asking, whose the author and what’s the title?
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“Walt Disney: Triumph of American Imagination” by Neal Gabler. It’s a long book, but I’ve enjoyed it.
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Thanks!
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