Time For A Rant, by Jamie Hill

I've heard stories about people who don't spend their free time on a computer. Some people find other ways to fill their free hours. Sure, I have a day job, and a house, and a family, and I try to walk most days. Granted, I've got plenty of ways to fill my spare time. But after all that (okay, sometimes before all that) I'm on my computer.

In my capacity as an author and a part-time employee of a publishing company, I can't avoid the computer or the internet. As much as I'd like to ignore Facebook sometimes, it's all a part of what I do online. But there are times when it simply gets to be too much. Heading into election season (one year out, for Pete's sake), I sense that time is upon me.

The pool of candidates at this point makes me shudder. And when the media isn't talking about them, they're dissecting some celebrity or quasi-celebrity-wanna-be, and talking about what that person ate for dinner. It's all too much! I barely care about what I ate for dinner, and I definitely don't need to take a picture of it and post it to Facebook. (I don't do Instagram, Twitter or Pintrest, where I understand you can find even MORE photos of people's dinners.)

I haven't decided yet who I'm going to vote for, and I wouldn't mind hearing some of the candidates opinions on issues that matter to me. But I don't want to hear what they had for dinner. Or for that matter what the current president had for dinner, or how the fact that he even ate dinner is probably the reason our country is in the shape that its in. I respect the job of president and you won't hear me bashing anyone who accepts that great responsibility. Would I want to do it? No way on God's green earth. Talk about life under a microscope. The word might get out what I had for dinner.

Before there was the internet and access to twenty-four hour news, we may have been less informed but I suspect we were happier. These days every time something happens--usually someone doing something bad to someone else--we read about it on the internet. Sure, there are happy posts featuring good news, but I suspect the bad stuff gets more hits. Pun intended. It's enough to make a person go crazy.

Now if you'll excuse me, all this talk about dinner has made me hungry. 

Rant over, for today. Thanks for listening.