I love politics. It’s arcane and maddening and dramatic and … human. I love reading about politics; I love listening to political podcasts; I love watching political shows on TV.

But for now, I’m giving it up. I still like all those things (political podcasts in particular – we’re in a golden age), but it’s so interesting to me that I find politics displaces other worthy interests.

Here’s what triggered this change … last week, I went to a Visual Studio launch event – it was the first time I’d been to a Microsoft event since I left the company. I missed seeing all my local programming friends! They seemed to miss me! Why had I not been around?

No particular reason … I don’t need to go to local tech events as part of my job, so I guess I wasn’t really paying attention. I’d like to pay attention to my local technical community again, but I don’t have any extra time. Something had to give. So I’m giving up politics.

Maybe I’ll run for office someday. If I do, I suppose I’ll have to pay attention again. For now, I’ll just get the condensed version from Twitter (and Rocky Mountain Mike parodies). I think that’s enough, but if something really important happens, please let me know.

NOTE: If you happen in the market for great political podcasts, here’s what I recommend:

• The Daily (NPR quality – but from the New York Times)
• Up First (also daily – easy to digest)
• The Weeds (super wonky)
• Pod Save America (if you like it, you’ll want to listen to their other podcasts, too)
• 538 Politics (stat nerds)