CLUELESS

During my time away, I absorbed no media. No news, no polling data, no newspapers. I wasn't online and I am clueless as to what the planet has been up to during my absence. I was isolated in my own square box dealing with some personal issues.

My job is to absorb as much content as I can from a million different frequencies. I read an enormous amount of material the average person wouldn't necessarily access. Subjects ranging from medical mistakes, abstract existential thought, strange facts, and of course global political, economic, and social curiosities.

I've been out of the loop and it's been a strange experience for me. I find that I'm not as involved emotionally or concerned  about what the markets are doing or who who's going to run the government or how many people were shot, or what the mood is in Afghanistan. All I know is what's in my head about what I've personally encountered as I took care of my own pressing affairs. Even now as I write this the television is turned off and I'm not online with my usual sources. I'm trying to experience this isolation so I can better explain what it’s like to suddenly not know anything about the rest of the world.

It's as if I've been to the moon and back with no communication with anyone or anything outside of the people I dealt with and the things I needed to get done. My days were long and eventful. I was shut off from everything.

I never watched television or listened to radio. At night, at the end of the day, I'd gather my thoughts, have something to eat, and crash. Then get up at sunrise and start all over again with a scribbled list of things I needed to attend to written on the backs of envelopes.

So now I'm waking up from the intensity of what I had to contend with and am slowly getting opening the door to the world again. It will have to creep back in because right now I feel the absolute tranquility of being removed from the media I'm so used to absorbing.

I'm a stranger now in a world I once lived in. It's both odd and enlightening. I understand what it is to tune out  and to walk around inside your own skin, to live in that meditative internal wonderland where you discover things about your ability to learn as well as to be  humble enough to be clueless.