Indigestion in the age of the 24-hour news cycle

I've found I need to go on vacation in order to unwind. It's impossible to do it around the house, where I am chained to this laptop - like it or not. I can't stand to see a headline on the crawl above this page -- there's one now! -- without wanting to pounce on it. And it did not used to be like this.

Twenty-five years ago when I entered the field, we didn't have computers; we had typewriters. Charming, antiquated, loud, clunky, wonderful typewriters. We purists pounded out our thoughts on a manual. I got through college that way. White-out (Liquid Paper) was our friend. When we were done writing articles, we had better things to do - like date, visit with friends and go for walks in the woods.

Nowadays, though, no self-respecting journalist is caught dead spending more than an hour away from her e-mail. I find that I can miss jobs, stories, gossip, you name it if I so much as take a long shower.

That's why I'm so sick at my stomach that I'm ready to leap off the nearest bridge, though I fear doing this might give an unfair advantage to the competition, who would no doubt write about my suicide and therefore grab a front page headline: WIEGLER FINALLY LOSES IT AND CATAPULTS OFF THE GW!

Well, I won't let that happen, of course, because there is Tums, a visit to the GI doc, and rumor has it something called meditation. And I've also heard it's physically possible to pull oneself away from the laptop with enough discipline, or at least a threat from one's boyfriend in the other room.