I guess out of regard for my 36 years in a newsroom, folks sometimes ask my take on this or that as it relates to a political issue, more often than not on a national level. Their reward lately has mostly been a blank stare.

That’s not me being rude; it is me being uninformed, and cognizant of the fact that I don’t really have anything of value to add. Someone just muttered, “Didn’t stop you before.”

I am, you see, on a self-imposed sabbatical from watching national news. Taking a timeout seems healthier than the Rx route.

I take it a day at a time, but if you count the days and assemble them into weeks, the count would be four. The experiment is continuing, but I think I am a happier for looking the other way during a COVID period when happy seems more of a pursuit than a place one can park for awhile.

Now I want to be clear, especially since these words are being written for a news publication: I am not suggesting that you join me in the boycott, and I certainly don’t want you to eschew local news by not reading The Robesonian, which is the only place you are going to find substantial news coverage where you live. I continue to read The Robesonian almost daily, although doing so as a consumer and not an editor remains a wee bit of a struggle.

Boycotting national news is not as easy as it sounds, at least when there isn’t any college football, NFL, college basketball or PGA golf being televised, making Tuesdays and Wednesdays a 235-yard carry over water and weekends a 10-inch tap-in.

Just a week or so ago, for an example, I found myself watching a special on Lady Gaga on Netflix. I enjoyed the show a lot, for the music, of course, but also because of what else Gaga revealed while sitting beside the pool. I just finished a Netflix mini-series on Richard Jewell, and man, those chamber folks in Murphy should be on a Zoom conference with a flock of lawyers.

So, you ask, what national news did you consume and are now boycotting?

Glad you asked, and yes, Fox News is in the mix. But that is at least partly because I’ve got a bad crush on Martha MacCallum, who is, believe it or not, 56 years old. Blonde and smart. I miss me some Martha.

Before we move on from Fox News, this has always interested me: How it is that liberals who hate Fox News always know what is on it? Put that under “things that make you go hmmm.”

Included in the mix were CNN and MSNBC, which I admit are not an easy watch, NPR for the closest thing to the truth, and the BBC because I love the accents. I am yet to find NewsMax, but that is surely because I have not looked for it.

The reason for the sabbatical is that I find the news increasingly depressing, and I have been unburdened from the need to be informed as part of my job. I also loathe the way news is nowadays packaged, and that is as opinion.

It is getting harder to cling to the belief that I am not old, but I embrace the notion I am old-school. I cut my journalistic teeth during a time when there was a heavy line between news and opinion, and I always put in an extra lap making sure that news in The Robesonian was displayed on any page but No. 4, where opinion gathered and was free to provoke — not just my opinion, but yours as well.

So watching Sean Hannity wrap news around his spittle-filled diatribe or Cuomo do so while sweating and pumping iron, runs contrary to what I believe journalism should be.

Don’t worry if you think that I am plunging into a denizen of the uninformed. I always was the first to finish the test so I can catch up quickly.

But in the meantime, the break from news has had the effect of a happy pill or a fourth Bud Lite. And if I am really starved for some straight news, delivered void of opinion, I can always check my Facebook newsfeed.