Leahey.org

The news channels choice to rehash the tragic events of 5 years ago has inspired me to write this article. All respect to all those who lost their life, and all the courageous firefighters and service workers who were the first on the scene, but I just don’t need to watch this all over again.

I chose the word ‘vacation’ because, in my opinion by the end of this experiment, you will consider it a vacation as well. The news, in general, is an unnecessary distraction in the average person’s everyday life. If anything earth-shattering happens, you will hear about it, regardless of whether or not you watch the news or read the paper. Think about 9/11, did you first hear about it on TV? Did you first find out from a newspaper? No, more than likely you heard from a coworker or a friend, moments after it happened. Big news has a way of getting out, you aren’t going to miss anything.

Now, I can hear the argument already; “If everyone ignored the news, no one would know about the earth-shattering event to pass it on to you”, this is similar to the rocks in the Grand Canyon theory. If I ever see that this article has swayed such a significant amount of the population away from watching the news, and people are missing out on anything important, I swear I’ll remove it.

So, let your information vacation start today. Avoid all the 9/11 tribute news reels (all respect to those lost), tomorrow morning pick up your paper and place it in a brown paper bag. Let this vacation last from today (September 11th) until Monday September 25th. Take the time you spent reading the paper or watching the nightly news, and read a book, call a friend, or talk to a family member. That’s two full weeks without any news of any kind. At the end of the two weeks, feel free to rummage through your stored up papers and see if you missed anything. My bet, you didn’t.