J. Nelson – Writer

I have a confession to make: I pretty much ignored the news while I was off on my adventure.

I was in New Orleans with my immediate and extended family for a wedding, and my days were jam-packed with doing touristy things and spending time with distant family members. Who has time to read the morning’s headlines when you’re scarfing down breakfast and catching the streetcar to the French Quarter? Who’s going to stop to watch the evening news when you’re hunting down dinner before going on a ghost hunt? Who can stay awake for the 11 o’clock report when you’ve spent the whole day exploring the Big Easy? (All of which is to say I had a fantastic time.)

But that’s not really the confession I need to make. The real confession is that, even though I’ve been home for several days, I’m still struggling to make myself pay attention to the news.

That week of being ignorant of Trump’s latest scandal or the Middle East’s latest clash or West Virginia’s latest political face-palm was truly blissful. So much so that it’s been nearly impossible to make myself go back to paying attention to these things.

Working at a newspaper for five years meant that I was surrounded by local, state, and national news all the time — to the point that it made me incredulous that other people couldn’t not know what was going on around them.

No longer working in news, I have gained a renewed respect for the effort it takes, as an ordinary American, to remain politically engaged and to find real news. (Memes and screenshots of tweets don’t count, even though that’s how too many people get their “news.”) And a renewed empathy for those who can’t or don’t want to put in that effort.

I didn’t know what I was going to write about today when I sat down, but I knew I needed to catch up on the top headlines from around West Virginia and the country.

Let me tell you — I did everything in my power to not do it. I played games on my iPad. I scrolled through Facebook so much that it couldn’t figure out what else to show me and I started seeing the same posts again and again. I sent emails that I’ve been putting off. I took a very long, leisurely lunch.

Finally, I ran out of ways to procrastinate and dove in. I caught up on Heather Cox Richardson’s posts. Read articles from West Virginia Watch. Read Harry Litman’s latest substack.

And all I could think was how wonderful it had been to leave all that behind for a week. I was sorely tempted to do it again.

But I know all too well what happens when we become willfully unaware. Ignorance is bliss until we have to face the consequences of our ignorance — like in January. Paying attention to what is happening in our towns, our states, our country, and our world is hard to do — mentally and emotionally — but it’s the right thing to do.

I don’t want to retread too much of the ground I covered in my “disengaged voters” post, so I’ll just say this: Thank you for doing the hard work of staying engaged and aware.

And thank you for being here to read this post. If you weren’t, it would be far too tempting for me to slip back into that blissful ignorance. Y’all help give me the motivation to keep doing the hard work and remind me that it is the right thing to do. Thank you.

So I’ll keep on keeping up with the news, and while I might not post next week because of Christmas, I’ll be back with some thoughts for the new year. (Just in time for the West Virginia Legislature’s next regular shit show session.)