CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
With endless misery and tragedy in the local news cycle, escalating global conflicts, and a noisy political landscape – Australians are feeling as uneasy this week as they’ve ever felt in recent years.
With winter fast approaching, this malaise is being compounded by the darker and colder weather.
While mindfulness and wellbeing techniques such as exercise and meditation have proven results in providing calm to individuals, Australians continue to search for other avenues of brief reprieve from the distress.
Betoota Heights man, Ingham Tweed (30) says there’s only really been one method that works for him.
As a middle management type in a boring email job, Ingham finds himself doom-scrolling social media and online news more than most would.
While this is a habit he picked up as an information-starved jobseeker during the pandemic, he says it really hasn’t been good for his soul to keep up the constant connection with both local and foreign events.
“Sometimes I just wonder what it’d be like to not own a phone” he says.
“I was watching Seinfeld the other night. I really envy those mid-90 New Yorkers being able to just focus on the mundane eccentricities of every day life”
As Ingham points out, aside from the occasional beach holiday over Christmas or Easter, he hasn’t really been able to tune out for quite a while.
“I reckon it was the last Big Day Out in 2014 when I went a week without looking at a newspaper” he says.
“Apparently Tony Abbott had slashed the federal budget”
“But I missed it all because I was full of piss listening to Violent Soho and Jungle Giants. I’m glad I missed it. I didn’t need to consume that information as a 20 year old. What the fuck was I gonna do about it?”
With the weight of current events weighing him down, Ingham says his only escape from this will be to try his best to recreate the good old days on the concrete slab underneath his timber Queenslander home.
“I’ve got a camping chair and a bluetooth speaker. And an esky” he says.
“I’ve invited my mates around on the condition that we only talk about sport and local gossip”
When it comes to food, Ingham says there will be a barbecue at some point, but if he’s too pissed he might just order pizzas.
“We will be spinning yarns. Timeless yarns, not topical yarns. And when we get sick of that, we can just sink into our chairs and listen to the heavy guitar riffs of Covered In Chrome”
“All I ever wanted was an afternoon. A middle class and an open sky”
