Slow Down, World. We Need a Timeout.

I can't keep up, can you? It feels like each day now brings a week's worth of news. I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure it didn't always feel like this.

I started this #30DayWritingChallenge two weeks ago exactly. My first piece was about the mail bombs sent to vocal critics of Donald Trump. Day two was about the mass shooting in Pittsburgh.

And, here we are again. Fourteen days of writing, and three major acts of terror have made an appearance in my posts.

The mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, California, included among the survivors and the dead people who escaped with their lives during the mass shooting in Las Vegas. How do you even handle that reality? How do you not feel like you are being hunted?

I could cut and paste parts of my piece about Pittsburgh into this one and you would not be able to tell the difference. Change the location. Change the death count. Rinse and repeat.

And I have yet to mention the yoga studio shooting in Florida. Or the other, almost daily shootings, that receive little to no media coverage. These are shootings in low income, communities of color where the ease of obtaining a gun combined with gang activity, leave many injured or dead. Is it better than my days growing up in the South Bronx? Yes. Are these communities where top notch educational opportunities -- ones that help break cycles of poverty and give kids real hope -- are all but non-existent? Yes.

As if these atrocities aren't bad enough, we had a contentious midterm election that's still not over. Plus a million hot takes about the future of the GOP ... the Democrats ... how we run elections (TL;DR: like shit) ... the 2020 presidential race (God help us!)... how the Dems should be worried ... how the GOP should be worried ... how you should be worried ... how you should worry less ... how all that worrying is worrisome.

And then Wednesday morning happened. Followed by Wednesday afternoon. Followed by Thousand Oaks. Followed by. Followed by. Followed by.

(As I am writing this, Joe Lhota, chairman of the much-maligned MTA, has resigned. It had been too quiet of a day, clearly.)

Each morning before I make breakfast I look to my phone to see what happened while I was asleep. And it is rare that I am surprised by what I find anymore. Thursday morning, when my phone was full of alerts about Thousand Oaks, all I could think was, "of course." For once, I would love to wake up and have nothing of interest to read. We could all use the mental break.

So, please, World. We ask you to just stop for a second. Let us catch our collective breath for a minute or two. Let those of us who need to grieve, grieve. Let those of us who need to figure out what comes next, do just that. Let those of us who just want to sleep peacefully for a night, do that too.

What are you doing to maintain your sanity? To limit how much news you are bombarded with? Feel free to share in the comments and please take care of yourself.