After you work in news a while, you become numb to reality.

Last week while sitting in my home office writing news, my son ran upstairs to tell me there was a fire. I looked at him and his over excitedness and said, “ok”. He said, “our fence, there’s a fire near our fence”. I said “if our fence catches on fire let me know”. Really?

I sat there for a second, kept typing, didn’t flinch, then decided, hmmm, I better go look. I didn’t even walk outside, I looked out my window and boom! Indeed, our fence WAS on fire. It wasn’t like I didn’t believe the kid, I just didn’t really care.

So while my son ran around getting a hose, I, forgetting I am a yoga teacher too and meditate daily, totally and completely, freaked out (I won’t tell you the one word I kept repeating. But I bet you know it).

I am now human again.

What does it take to bring us news writers back to reality?

Writing the stories of rape, murder, drug deals, burglaries, assaults and various attacks on other humans doesn’t make me human. And it’s embarrassing to say, but I actually get semi-excited when, in writing small town news, I see a story having to do with any of the above. In my estimation, that makes me sub-human.

When I see a story about children or animals being abused or worse, I’m human again. If adults are victimized, I’m not affected? Sometimes I am, but most times I am not. I don’t even know if this is good or bad. If I’m numb to the pain, that’s good, yes? If I’m a basket case at work every day, that’s bad, right?

What do you think?