The information diet of a senior campaign staffer is insane. We

Host: The night was electric — not with noise, but with absence. The kind of silence that follows a storm that has taken everything with it. The campaign office, once a beehive of voices, keyboards, and screens flickering through caffeine-fueled dawns, now stood hollow.

Old posters hung crooked on the walls: smiling faces, slogans, the kind of hopeful colors that now looked faded under the hum of tired fluorescent lights. Desks were empty but still cluttered — with coffee cups, lanyards, and the ghosts of a thousand notifications that would never come again.

Jack sat at one of the desks, his phone lying face down beside him. The glow of a muted laptop screen cast a pale halo across his face, lined not with age, but with withdrawal. Across from him, Jeeny leaned against the window, looking out at the streetlights flickering against the empty parking lot.

The quote was scribbled on the whiteboard behind them, almost as an afterthought:

“The information diet of a senior campaign staffer is insane... Once the campaign was over and we were successful, the information flow dried up.” — Harper Reed

Jack: “You know what’s funny, Jeeny? We were supposed to win. And we did. But now… I can’t even tell if it mattered. The rush, the chaos, the updates, the breaking news — it all just stopped. Like someone unplugged reality.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s because the campaign wasn’t reality, Jack. It was adrenaline pretending to be purpose.”

Host: Her voice was gentle but firm, like a melody trying to guide a lost rhythm back to itself. The room’s air still carried the faint scent of stale pizza and burnt coffee — the perfume of long nights spent chasing urgency.

Jack: “Purpose? It was obsession, Jeeny. We were gods of the inbox — every buzz a pulse, every alert a vein of relevance. I had three devices strapped to me at once, and for the first time in my life, I mattered. I was part of something bigger.”

Jeeny: “And now that it’s over, you feel smaller.”

Jack: “Now that it’s over, I feel disconnected. The silence hurts. I check my phone out of habit, even though I know there’s nothing waiting. It’s like a phantom limb — I can still feel the messages that aren’t coming.”

Jeeny: “You were addicted to the noise, Jack. Not to meaning — to motion. Campaigns do that to people. They turn your brain into a battlefield of pings and dopamine hits. You start to think speed equals significance.”

Jack: “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Jeeny. It wasn’t dopamine. It was duty. Every alert, every call — it meant something then. Someone’s numbers. Someone’s vote. Someone’s future.”

Jeeny: “And now that duty’s gone, what’s left? You or the silence?”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the window, carrying faint echoes of laughter from the bar down the street — a group of campaign volunteers celebrating their victory, still high on purpose. Inside, though, the air was still. Even the buzz of the overhead light seemed too loud.

Jack: “You know what the sick part is? The victory didn’t even feel real. The second it was announced, I didn’t celebrate — I just reached for my phone. Waiting for the next thing. The next crisis. But there wasn’t one.”

Jeeny: “You were living on borrowed adrenaline. It’s not just politics, Jack. It’s the whole digital bloodstream. We mistake constant connection for meaningful engagement. The campaign just made it sacred.”

Jack: “Don’t tell me you don’t miss it too. The momentum. The madness. The way the world bent around your notifications.”

Jeeny: “Of course I miss it. But I also remember what it cost. Sleep. Meals. Friends. My own voice. We were tethered to information so tightly, we forgot how to feel without it.”

Jack: “We were changing the world.”

Jeeny: “And we couldn’t even change our habits.”

Host: The laptop screen dimmed to black. Jack didn’t move. He stared at the faint reflection of his own eyes in the dark monitor — tired, restless, searching for the next signal in the static of stillness.

Jeeny walked to the whiteboard, reading the quote again. Her fingers brushed against the dry marker lines, as if trying to smudge their meaning back into clarity.

Jeeny: “You know what Harper meant? That information’s like sugar. Feels good, keeps you running — until it doesn’t. Then all you’re left with is a crash.”

Jack: “Don’t compare me to an addict.”

Jeeny: “Then stop acting like one. Look around — the campaign’s over, but you’re still waiting for permission to live.”

Jack: “It’s not that simple. You don’t just turn off months of intensity like a light switch.”

Jeeny: “No, but you can turn toward something else. Maybe the point wasn’t to live on information, Jack. Maybe it was to learn how to live after it.”

Jack: “After information. That’s poetic, but meaningless. The world doesn’t stop spinning because I take a walk.”

Jeeny: “No, but your mind might start breathing again.”

Host: The rain began — soft at first, then heavier — beating gently against the glass like fingertips insisting on attention. Jeeny turned toward it, her face illuminated by the city’s neon glow through the wet window.

Jack finally picked up his phone again. The screen lit up his face. No new messages. Just the old ones — ghosts from the campaign, fading like echoes of shouts in a now-empty stadium.

Jack: “You know what the hardest part is? During the campaign, every piece of information mattered. A poll, a tweet, a rumor. Every word felt heavy, like it could tilt the world. Now, nothing does. I scroll and scroll, and it all just… slides off.”

Jeeny: “That’s what happens when you confuse relevance with reality. You lived inside the pulse of a story, and now the story’s over. You’re not broken, Jack — just unscrolled.”

Jack: “Unscrolled.”

Jeeny: “Yeah. Like when you finally stop refreshing, and the silence feels like static. But it’s not static — it’s stillness.”

Jack: “Stillness feels like dying.”

Jeeny: “That’s because you’ve mistaken noise for life.”

Host: Her words hung in the air like smoke — invisible but lingering. Jack set his phone down again, slower this time. The light from the window flickered across his eyes, and for the first time that night, he didn’t reach for another device.

The room seemed to breathe again — faintly, quietly — as if the building itself was exhaling after months of tension.

Jack: “You think this ends? The cycle? We detox, rest, find peace — until the next campaign, the next crisis, the next flood of data?”

Jeeny: “Maybe it doesn’t end. But maybe it changes. Maybe you learn how to choose your noise instead of letting it choose you.”

Jack: “That’s harder than it sounds.”

Jeeny: “So was the diet. Remember? No sugar, no salt, no carbs… and too much chicken.”

Jack: [chuckles] “You’re comparing a media withdrawal to meal prep?”

Jeeny: “Both are detoxes from addiction. One to flavor, one to relevance.”

Jack: “And both taste awful.”

Jeeny: “But both make you see what you were feeding on.”

Host: The rain softened, a whisper now, washing the city in the cool scent of renewal. The posters on the wall fluttered slightly from the air vent — faces of politicians, once radiant with promise, now just printed echoes of an exhausted ideal.

Jack leaned back, closed his eyes, and finally smiled — not the confident, rehearsed grin of a strategist, but the fragile, human kind that only comes after surrender.

Jack: “Maybe silence isn’t the enemy. Maybe it’s the reset button.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The campaign ended, Jack. But the story didn’t. It just went offline.”

Host: The two of them sat there as the storm passed — two silhouettes surrounded by paper memories and sleeping devices. The city lights outside glowed like slow, beating hearts.

Somewhere in the dark, a phone vibrated once — a ghost of the old life. Jack didn’t reach for it.

Host: And in that moment, the silence wasn’t empty anymore. It was full — of space, of breath, of everything the noise had buried.

The campaign was over.
The information flow had dried.
But the living — the slow, unfiltered, unscripted kind — had just begun.