Most mornings before I go to work, bearing in mind I’m not running too late, I stop off at the local bagel store or coffee shop and get a black coffee and the newspaper. I know, I’ve heard it before, I’m twenty-one going on eighty.
I just find it extremely satisfying to sit down with something burning hot and deliciously bitter and read about what is going on in the world around me. Having the paper in my hands and flipping through the sections, and usually skipping over sports, I get to the health category. I run my hands down the slightly rough pages as I become informed in the most relaxed way. This is one of my favorite ways to begin the day.
Other days that I hit the snooze button one too many times, I realize that I need to do multiple things at once in order not to fall behind. This means that as I drive to class, along with my eating breakfast and doing something with my hair, which I probably forgot to brush, I will listen to NPR on the radio. It sort of feels sometimes like when I’m busy and I have a lot on my mind that I absorb things better when they are spoken opposed to written, so I enjoy this form of news. It also makes me feel like I’m being really productive, meanwhile most of the time it’s just me not having my life together.
I have never been on top of using my phone the way other tech savvy people around me do. My friends pull up different applications and maneuver them effortlessly when they are reading the news. They tell me to download this and how to get notifications about that. Don’t get me wrong, I think that it is definitely a good way to stay updated; I just don’t find it very fulfilling using my phone to digitally read the paper. However, sometimes I check my twitter account, and once I’m finished scrolling through the complaints about daily life from the friends I have on there, I reach the miscellaneous celebrities and other political figures that I follow. This is an amusing way to stay connected, as I find Trump’s constant tweets absolutely ridiculous, but it also lets me know about the little things that might be going on that may not reach the paper.
The same goes for Instagram, which I admit I spend way too much time on. I find myself scrolling through my feed, not even processing pictures a lot of the time, just swinging likes left and right. Seeing so many people post images of themselves looking unrealistically flawless, or like they’re just having the time of their lives can feel pretty droning sometimes. However, there are some news accounts that are beneficial to look into and read when I stumble upon them. E! News, Fox News, and NBC are all accounts that I follow on Instagram because of the level of visual information that they post. The photographs paint a picture of what is occurring in the stories, which really brings each of them to life.
