I feel like I need to prioritize the recent spate of catastrophes filling my head. I’m not talking about where to send money, as important as that is. I’m simply talking about getting brain cells around the bad news. As a meteorologist might say, it’s all barreling down on us pretty hard.

Yesterday alone had a quake, a nuclear threat, the potential loss (again) of pre-existing conditions and a few more storms on a first name basis hurtling, swirling and raging. When I reached for my phone in a half awake blur just to check the time at 6:04 this morning, the notification screen was glowing. I learned twenty kids were crushed in a school. Mind boggling, horrific and part of an oddly common and frequent pattern in what seems like the Savage September of ’17.

“I should give up reading the tabloids. Practically everyone else has.”

Even grim local news, three dead in a Queens bus accident this week, seems part of the global apocalyptic atmosphere, and at the same time oddly personal. A man the same age of my boyfriend, who just happened to be walking along the sidewalk, was killed in the crash. Everything feels random, yet connected.

The sense of a doomsday nearing is hardly my own observation. Harvey had barely left Houston, and Irma was just slipping into Miami when the New York Times published a piece on the collective bad vibe from all the major weather events this summer. The trouble is, two days after it ran, there was a whole new disaster dump.

The terrible news keeps surging in waves. You can’t help feel for the islands you’ve never heard of. They get their 15 minutes of fame for being wiped off the map. They say there’s no such thing as bad PR. But what of Dominica and Barbuto?

I suppose I should give up reading the tabloids. Practically everyone else has. But I’m a news junkie. And besides, I can't blame The NY Post and The Daily News for the ubiquitous gloom. Last night my Lyft driver apologized for mentioning the president. “I don't want to ruin your night,” he said ruefully as he pulled to the curb. “It’s ok,” I assured him. Everything’s relative, even when it’s relatively awful.

When I woke up a second time this morning, to an 6:30 alarm, I turned once more toward my phone. This time I didn’t reach for my glasses. Again, I could see that fuzzy red CNN logo shining on the screen. I hit snooze.