Margaret Renkl finds a solution for dealing with our times that is much like Austin Kleon’s.
In recent years, I’ve been looking for a solution to this conundrum. How is it possible to be a well-informed citizen and simultaneously a calm, mostly cheerful, more or less sane human being?
The closest thing I’ve found to a workaround is the right dosing. I follow the news during daylight hours. At night, I read a book.
Sometimes it’s a poetry collection I can finish in an evening. Sometimes it’s a memoir or a thick, juicy novel that will carry me through a week or two. Often it’s an essay collection, a genre which comes with those lovely, built-in stopping places that make it easier to close the book and avert a wrestling match with the clock.