Some New Year’s changes

The New York Times published a story the other day under the headline, Work. Walk 5 Minutes. Work.

Tuesday was my first day back to work in 2017, so I decided to walk five minutes every hour. I also downloaded a pedometer app on my iPhone, which said I finished the day with 11,442 steps.

We’ll see what happens today, but I work in a five-story building, so there are plenty of stairs to climb and lots of space to walk. My route yesterday took 4 1/2 to 5 minutes and about 600 to 700 steps per trip, according to the app.

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There is plenty of space available on my phone for new apps because I removed Facebook and all of the other social-media apps that were sucking up too much space and way too much of my time. It was way overdue. Those closest to me didn’t like the amount of time I spent on my phone. And because of the elections and lingering political disputes, more and more of what I spent time reading on Facebook just made me angry, so why keep banging my head against a virtual wall? It seemed like the cliched definition of insanity — continuing to do the same things and expecting different results. So, for now, at least, no more Facebook on my phone.

Speaking of Facebook, I’ve also made a few other changes. I did some weeding on my list of friends, removing virtually everyone I have either never met in person or developed a pretty good relationship with in other ways. Mainly this consisted of people I added back in my days as a newspaper editor, which ended five years ago. It was time to move on.

Also, I’ve stopped following all of the partisan and even remotely political pages I’ve stumbled upon in the past. I’m tired of all of it. Will I still be on Facebook? Yes. Probably still too often, in fact. But I’m determined to carve out more time for reading things that are more worthwhile, writing, blogging, walking, bicycling and spending more quality time with those who are closest to me.

Those things are all more important than anything Donald Trump does on any given day that is guaranteed to drive me wild, as the click bait headline writers would say, so I’m clicking out.