Sometime earlier this year I started to try to avoid the news by reading books and by limiting myself to non-news items on the internet. Around the beginning of March I ran across a review of a recent rather unusual book about the tarot. (My browser history was frustratingly no help in figuring out where I had seen this when I began to wonder.) And then it seemed like a sign that Kindle version of that book is available for free with kindleunlimited so I downloaded it and although I tried to read it, I found it too esoteric and hard to follow to finish. However that made me start thinking about learning more about the tarot as a way to avoid the news.
Then in mid-March there was a second sign: Alice Gregory's article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine validated my general goal. Here's her lede.
In the past few months, elaborate rituals of information avoidance have consumed the lives of people I know. Almost anything, it seems, is better than reading the news. One friend started running; another cooks overinvolved dinners; my mom went hiking in the Andes. I have taken to poring over the often grammatically incorrect half-memories of complete strangers. And I can’t stop. It’s like being on a cozy drug.
After reading of the practical things others are to doing to avoid the news, I thought that a tarot-based IFJM2017 project might be a way I could accomplish something practical along with learning more about a subject I don't take very seriously. That seemed like fun and, as you can read, I enjoyed pulling more of the surprising variety of threads on the internet and creating a backstory starting with this post.
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