He's my brother - and I've decided to follow his inspiring example and try to set some goals for myself.
One of my goals was to use this blog to comment on interesting news. My specific idea was triggered by the notion that part of why the world and the general news is so depressing, is because of the sense of helplessness it brings with it. On 702 today, they were talking about exactly this issue, and a trauma counciller phoned in to say that she felt that a lot of South Africans were becomming "negatively resilliant" i.e. losing our ability to be empathic towards victims of crime, violence and war because we are constantly bombarded by these stories, and we simply switch off in a form of self defense. I think this is a real problem. I also feel that too few people actually voice their opinions about things - at least, too few people with non-extreme opinions about anything. So our society gradually becomes disempowered and disillusioned, and more and more permissive and depressing because not enough ordinary people feel that they can do anything about the negatives.
I am going to try to post a "what you can do" section for any news stories where I could think of something constructive to do about them. I may not always do what I suggest, but I'll try.
My next goal is to set some concrete goals. My general goals are: to get a handle on my job - to be more organised at home, and to eat more healthily, and to get my head a bit sorted. I'm aiming to be less stressed and happier - I should mention that I'm fairly seriously depressed at the moment, i.e. often in tears on the way to work, trouble sleeping, repeated negative thoughts blah, blah blah. I should be on anti-depressants, but my daughter, (who I will call Zeb for the purposes of this blog), is allergic to everything under the sun and so I'm still breastfeeding. Bye, bye happy pills.
Concrete goals will follow in a subsequent post, maybe.... I don't know if I want to make them public or not.
3 comments:
Hey! Finally got round to your blogspot. I hope that you'll find time and energy to keep it up =)
You go on the "what you can do about stuff" posts. I am always infuriated by people who say "oh, I know there are starving people, but what can _I_ do?" Argh. Be proactive! Don't moan about the country, do something to change it, even in your own small way. Hah.
For good news, have you checked out http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/ ? It's a great antidote to all the murder/violence on the news. I sometimes get the feeling that news papers and news programmes specifically focus on the most shocking stories just to get people to watch. Yes, it's disgusting that children are brutally raped and murdered, but does it do any good to speak about it in horrific detail on the news? We know the situation is bad, we don't need more prompting and I'm sure the parents don't need to be reminded by headlines everywhere they go.
That is a great site! Thank-you :).
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