It has occurred to me lately that we live in a golden age of media.

And not just because of totally awesome things like streaming video services, podcasts, and Internet self-publishing.

What really makes this age amazing is that we are in an era where the average person can, if they are willing to do the research to learn how to do it, make media that still seems very slick and impressive to us.

Take a recent Daily Show. They made fun of the news media being all impressed by this video the virulent infection known as ISIS put out, and it is true that what they did with their video is not particularly hard by modern standards.

But it still looks impressive as hell to me. Admittedly, I am 41 years old and not exactly on the cutting edge of modern video production, as you can tell from the, shall we say, unrefined nature of my videos.

So to me and my generation, at least, this is an amazing time to be alive. The Internet is jam packed with art of extraordinary quality and excellence ^[1] that just takes my breath away. People of all kinds are producing works of creative brilliance, like they always have, but with far more powerful tools than every before, and that leads to an extraordinary abundance of extremely professional looking and not at all crappy art that just blows my 41 year old mind away.

Maybe it is different for the current generation. Maybe they look at the stuff that wows me and shrug and say “Big deal, anyone with Final Cut Pro can do that with a couple of clicks. ” Maybe I am as dorkily behind the times as someone who is still blown away by the sound quality of CDs. I don’t care.

I just know that, to me, this feels like a golden age of media and I am continually surprised and extremely pleased by the sheer quantity and quality of the work people are doing and sharing today.

And what truly excites me is that this kind of democratization of the tools of creation can only lead to a quantum leap in the state of the art as what previously was available to only a few is now available to the masses, and the masses have to come up with new ways to compete for your click time.

So things are only going to get better from here on in, and I look forward to many more years of being amazed.

I have made the decision that it is okay for me to just not think about certain things.

This was not an easy decision for me to make, because I have been intellectually omnivorous my hole life and have a fairly good track record for being able to think my way to some kind of peace with difficult subjects before.

But the older I get, the more choosy I am about what I do with my brains and especially what effect my intellectual intake will have on my future mood.

When I was younger, I took pride in being intellectually fearless. There was no subject too dark, too disturbing, or too depressing for me to tackle head on. Give me any subject and I will tell you all my theories about it, quite likely past the point where you don’t want to hear about it any more because things have gotten way too dark.

I live in the dark.

And I am still, largely, that person. I am still the person who thinks about how serial killers think or what role death plays in religion and deep dark stuff like that. I believe, to my core, that ignorance solves nothing and that the world needs people like me who are willing and able to go right into the heart of darkness, chaos, and madness and learn its ways in order to root it out and defeat it. And so I am still one who, at least in his mind, treads a dark path.

But as I have aged and become more away of the potential mood effects of certain subjects, I have slowly and reluctantly eased back on my stubborn pride and stopped being such an intellectual kamikaze about everything, and now I can give myself permission to avoid thinking about things that are big and scary and all too real and about which I can do absolutely nothing.

Why upset myself for no reason?

So here, in no particular order, are the things I am very specifically not thinking about lately.

1. The Ebola outbreak. Things like disease outbreaks freak me the hell out. Ebola is a horrible disease with truly nightmare inducing effects. It has not been a big problem yet because the outbreaks have happened in rural areas and the disease does not spread through the area, only via contact with infected fluids.

But now it’s gone urban, and holy fuck. I am brutally frightened by the whole thing. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

So I am not going to think about it.

2. The upcoming war with ISIS/ISIL.

I have absolutely no confidence that air support will be enough. After all, it hasn’t ever been enough so far. Saying that you are not putting ‘boots on the ground’ and only committing to air strikes et al is basically modern code for “we have to pretend like we have done everything we could to prevent the actual war we, and our defense contractor buddies, have already decided is going to happen.

So all us Coalition of the Willing countries, and yes that include Canada, are doing to end up dragged into another war in the Middle East, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

So I’m not going to think about it.

And finally, the whopper, the topper, the non-stop show stopper…

3. The impending environmental apocalypse.

Polar bears drowning. Australia burning. Oceans growing more acidic. Bizarre and unprecedented weather all over the world. The evidence is piling up that we are not merely fucked, but more fucked than ever before.

And there’s nothing I can do about it, so I am not going to think about it.

That’s all for me for today, folks. I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.