Considering how long the world has been on fire, it's amazing that it hasn't burnt down to charcoal yet. It continues to worry us over what its sparks will jump to next. It feels we're only a virus, policy or racist bastard away from a new calamity, at any time. Most days, the news cycle has me puckered up so tight that my ring could crush a diamond. With my gig, I can't simply shut the world out. But I can sure as hell filter it.
I've gotten very picky about what information I ingest and how I consume it. Casually browsing a website allows terrors, assumptions and opinions on what will kill us all next to flow into your eyeholes, without sanitization. Some folks are cool with that. I'm not. In order to keep my stress down, I need to at least attempt to curate what media I read and listen to. As I was scrolling through my Mac App Store purchases a few months ago, I came across a piece of software that I hadn't thought about in ages: Reeder. For those unfamiliar with it, it's an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) aggregator for Macs, iPhones and iPads. Choose what you want to see, where you want to see it from and that's all you get.
It took me a while to get my RSS feeds set up the way that I wanted–it'd been a long time since I used such a simple information delivery system. It's easy to let websites decide what to throw at you. And, it's difficult to resist adding every RSS feed that looks interesting to your list of daily downloads. The smart money, for your sanity and the amount of time spent reading each day, is going low and slow with the stuff you want to peruse. Take your time to figure it out. If something looks good, add it. If it turns out to offer more stress or fluff to your feed than you're interested in, stomp it.
Yeah, a lot of folks already use RSS daily and have for decades. But for some people, it's a new concept. It's worth sharing. Maybe it might bring a little more peace to your daily routine. If you're interested in getting started with it, Reddit has a great thread on it in r/nostupidquestions. There's more than enough helpful information there to help you get up and running. Give it a try. You might dig it.
Reeder [reederapp.com]
