keeping focus on God (and not the news!)
As someone who 'aspires' to spend more time alone, even if I do have my feet in both worlds, so to speak, the main aim should be to direct my thoughts to God. That doesn't, of course, mean thinking of nothing but God, but to live each day in the direction of 'Godliness'. This doesn't only mean during prayer time but at every moment of our life. of course, we do get distracted quite regularly, but as in the prayer article previously, the main point is to return to our focus on God and 'Godliness', by which we basically mean doing good rather than bad; a very simplistic explanation, but one that will serve for this purpose.
Like many people, I like to keep an eye on what is going on throughout the world, and it is no bad thing to be informed. Prior to the internet, this would have perhaps meant watching the news or reading the paper, or possibly a documentary. While these could give rise to anger or despondency, we soon returned to our daily life without them having too much long term impact on us.
These days though, the news and other (mis)information is bombarded at us through email alerts, tweets and other social media posts and pop up articles etc. It is bad enough that some of these are depressing enough as it is, but the fact that many of these are untrue, or half true at best, and are deliberately targeted as propaganda makes them even worse ..... they are rarely used to improve the life of people, well, perhaps except for people who want, or already have, power. At the very least, they often distract us from things in our lives that are much more important.
It is best to avoid these where possible. Sometimes we may want to follow a story though to learn more. More often though we simply just 'doom scroll' out of curiosity. This has next to no value in our lives and can even be damaging.
To keep this personal, I noticed myself doing this this morning before prayer. I saw a new article about a local councillor who was going to have a vote of no confidence in them. Rather than thinking that there was no interest as i didn't know them and this was miles away, i followed the link and read the story. I then realised I didn't know what party they were a member of so I googled that ... and so it continued. About 30 minutes later, not only did I know who they were, what they had done etc but I had also wasted 30 minutes on something that was absolutely pointless and irrelevant to me and was something which I had no control over and would do nothing about; basically, what we would call a waste of time.
I find that when I am disciplined enough to avoid these articles and tweets etc, that I feel more 'centred' and content about life, and possibly more humble too. I am determined to avoid these more and more (though I can't promise I won't follow the odd 'cat playing piano tweet) and focus more on my solitary life, paying attention to the life I feel I am called to live.