Keys

In Orwell's 1984, the government was trying to simplify the English language with the ultimate goal of reducing it to a single word. I don't know about language, but I want to do that with keys. I want one key that will get me into anything I need to get into.
Since my family is moving around right now, I have a fluctuating keyring. A borrowed house key finds its way onto my keychain for a couple of weeks or months, then is returned to its owner. Occasionally I borrow a car and pick up an extra key for a while. I feel my keyring in my pocket when I walk now. It isn't a stable shape any more and it tends to poke and bulge.
Yesterday I handed over a work key I'm not going to need any more. One by one the keys to the cars, the office, my parents' house will get sold or returned and when I get on the plane to Africa I will have an empty keyring with just a flash drive on it.
I don't know how to feel about that. I should feel light and free, but today I just feel like the doors of my life for the last 15 years will be closing and locking behind me and I won't have the keys to open them again. I will have no keys, no means of opening locked doors.

Great News

I’m finding that I don’t want to know what’s going on in the world so much any more. An average television newscast has an astounding amoung of deep tragedy. Any one “bad news” item would be catastrophic in my family. How am I supposed to process it all with any semblance of empathy? The only options I can see are callousness or ignorance. There’s enough tragedy on my own street to keep me busy.
I don’t want to drop out completely, I care about what happens to the world, what happens to people, but I can’t handle every child that drowns in a swimming pool in the United States. I can’t process every murder/suicide rampage and train wreck. This is the downside of RSS feeds. All the disaster of the world shows up on my desktop in real time. If a father burns down his house with his children inside in New Jersey, I know about it before the ashes are cool.