I’ve too much to read. Much too much. Each morning my inbox is awash with unomittables. How can I not know about China, Moscow, Ukraine, the economy, our criminal regime, US politics, business and social trends? It’s my job to know! It is also my job to reflect, remove myself, bid (at a minimum) good morning to Jane.

                  My reading is not esoteric. It’s written for generalists – and well-written. Interminable quantities of information and opinion await my click. The more I stuff my brain with others’ views, the more confidence recedes. Some of the day’s topics are almost incomprehensibly complex. Is Europe dwindling into an economic backwater? (Some say yes, some no.) How ominous is AI? Why does the stock market keep ratcheting upward when most sage observers insist a reckoning is due?

                  And so forth.

                  I am proud of this plethora and grateful to these writers. While America’s legacy media companies are being gagged by plutocrats, independent voices proliferate and intensify. It’s as if the best newspaper op-ed pieces have been gathered online and permitted free expression. Why amidst so much excellence you’d choose to read my maunderings I can’t fathom but I’m grateful. I’m not sure I’d read me if it weren’t me. I might want to, but who has time?

                  This superabundance, while welcome, insensibly stupefies. Decades ago, having read my New York Times and browsed a few magazines, I felt I knew what was “going on.” We never know what’s going on, since that’s an infinitude, but we feel we do, and that assurance soothes. Knowing what’s going on we know better how to deploy ourselves. These days my intellect bails as frantically as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice not to drown. Should I be reading Shakespeare or manning barricades? To indulge my passion feels like shirking. Yet what use cramming my mind with others’ thoughts?

                  Instinct recoils from plethoras. Jane and I can’t forget a dinner at a local restaurant where the portions were heaped so high our appetites forsook us and we fled. Excess disgusts, discourages. We feel defeated, almost abused, inadequate to the task. Increasingly, I cringe at my inbox. The nonstop turpitude of America’s present regime compounds my confusion. So many crimes, so little time!

                  How to cope? Periodically I purge my professors with apologetic regret: I would if I could, friend, but I can’t. When folks drop me for this reason, I condole. The moment my company becomes burdensome, I’ve defeated my purpose, which is to please.

                  I depend increasingly on curators to brief me on what news is most pressing. Their selections are necessarily repetitive, but these concurrences suggest a consensus. I weary of the Nameless One’s ceaseless spew of lies, but how can they be ignored?

                  I do ignore whoever infuriates. In theory, I should hear out my adversaries; in practice, their blather diverts me into shadowboxing. Does this mean I live inside a bubble? Don’t we all?

                  I shy from length, setting aside thoughtful posts for a later that never comes. I restrict my own posts to six hundred words, lest others do the same unto me.

                   I don blinders, like a trotter, to keep my eyes on the track. Increasingly (I blush to report), instead of rereading books, I ask Alistair, a.k.a. AI, to remind me what’s in them. His replies are mostly reliable and only occasionally unravel into garrulity. I can reject his recommendations rudely, since algorithms (best I know) have no feelings. This saves time.

                  Too much to read corrodes calm and, I suspect, sagacity. Wouldn’t a brain less crammed see clearer? But maybe I’m fooling myself.