Bad habits
by Cathy Rentzenbrink
And finally…
When I was growing up I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents. He was a bus driver and she was a typist. They thought it part of their civic duty to be informed so every night they watched the evening news. It always ended with a lighthearted “and finally,” before they turned off the television and went to bed. That last bit is hard to do in the modern world. In an era of multiple news channels and social media how do we ever find an off switch? And how do we re-create our own “and finally” that makes us feel a little better about the world before we go to sleep?
A friend of mine is cross that he doesn’t fall asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. He spends his evening watching news programmes on the bounce and scrolling through Twitter and emails on his phone. When he turns in for the night, he puts the phone on his bedside table. He can’t turn it off because he uses it as an alarm clock. After a few minutes of trying to fall asleep he gets bored and picks the phone up again for another round of checking. Why is he surprised that this is not a recipe for a good night’s sleep?