I’ve got information overload.  As a working woman approaching 50, mother of a teenager and 3rd grader who struggles with reading, a wife, colleague, friend, sister, daughter, and global citizen, I feel the pressure to keep up with the latest news about my industry, leadership, management, coaching, women’s health, aging, teenage health, academic success, college trends, youth sports, healthy eating, weight management, exercise, sex, maintaining a beautiful home, watching my budget, planning for retirement, tending to friendships, not neglecting my spouse, keeping in touch with long-distance family, caring about the environment, being well versed in global social issues and politics, national/state/regional politics, the status of women and the disenfranchised, and my religion, all the while honoring my culture and history and finding quality time for myself.  Oh dear…was that a run-on sentence?!?  It’s a sign of the times.  Every piece of information seems so important and significant and there’s so much of it!  To make matters worse, in addition to the hundreds sound bites and headlines that fly at me every day, I’m supposed to remember all the flowery, clever quotations that come around telling me that I’m a good person and I should “live in the moment.” And how many ways are there to express “live in the moment” when living in the moment means being bombarded with today’s media explosion and the expectation to keep up? 

We’re going on a family vacation in a couple of weeks.  A real, get-away-and hang-out-at-the beach vacation.   I debate whether or not to take my cell phone.  Who am I going to call?  The roaming charges would be exorbitant anyway.   As for a camera, we do have two of those – somewhere, hardly used, thanks to the ubiquitous cell phone and Facebook.  My 7 year old has already reminded me to be sure to pack the iPad.  The problem is, the husband agreed.  “The kids can have some down-time,” he said.  As if being in a tropical paradise, staring at the ocean and sitting by the pool for a whole week doesn’t qualify as “down-time.”  Not to mention how much my kids love watching TV in bed in the hotel room since we don’t have TVs in the bedrooms at home! I want to unplug.  I want to be convinced that if I miss a week’s worth of news updates and Facebook postings, my life will still be intact, as will my sanity. 

In truth, the pressure to keep up is mine.  I come by it honestly.  While I’m not what you would call a big book lover, and the books that I do read are non-fiction, I certainly have my father’s love of knowledge and information.   It’s just that, these days, it seems like we have less of a choice about consuming information.  It’s everywhere and unavoidable in this media age.  My boss doesn’t own a TV.  Sometimes I envy her.  Last Saturday night I sat in a quiet living room and read a small book cover to cover in one sitting.  It was glorious – just me, a glass of wine, the couch, and a book.  It was the first time in a long time that I had read anything longer than a magazine article.  I’m not ready to give up magazines yet.  I will read any magazine, any time, including Popular Mechanics at the dentist’s office when there’s nothing else around.  That’s just it – information is everywhere, accessible and easily digested in small but significant quantities.  Large, eloquently written tomes have given way to brief online articles and factoids.  But it’s my own desire to know a lot and know more that keeps me hooked on the daily media frenzy, mostly online.

I will not be packing my cell phone and the iPad for our family vacation.  If I were to close my eyes and daydream about the trip, a vision comes to mind, like a Salvador Dali painting, of myself sitting quietly on the sand, staring out at the ocean, while words and sounds swirl all around me like small tornados and float out into the universe.   For just one week I will tune out, skip the updates, and risk ignorance.  And just then, another clever quote comes to mind: Ignorance is bliss.   And it shall be.