Week 1: About halfway through your first week of not obsessively following the 24/7 news coverage of Trumpworld, you notice the constant and acute throbbing in your temple has been reduced to a dull hum. You may also be able to take deep breaths for the first time in what feels like forever (i.e. since November 8, 2016), although this symptom could take until the second or third week of your cleanse to manifest itself.
Week 2: Invigorated by your new-found physical well-being, you begin showering regularly and start going to the gym. You also make the decision to cook more and even sign up for a Blue Apron membership. You're almost able to smile at your children again.
Week 3: You're able to make it through an entire lovemaking session with your spouse without breaking down in tears even once. You also remember what it's like to laugh without bitterness and make a note in your journal, a journal you started in order to chronicle your brave decision to live without Trump news, to laugh often and loudly moving forward.
Week 4: With the paralyzing fear of the Trump administration's latest moves no longer occupying your every waking moment, your brain can once again learn new concepts and retain critical information. As a result, you teach yourself Spanish in a single week. You also recognize the limitations of popular programs such as Duolingo and Babble and develop your own language-learning app, which you sell to a promising start-up for a handsome fee and a sizeable stake in the company. Midweek, you watch a sunset for the first time since November 8, 2016, and weep at the beauty you'd forgotten still existed in this cold, cold world.
Week 5: Recognizing that life is all too fragile and almost anything can be forgiven, you begin the process of repairing the relationship with your estranged father. The relationship is completely repaired by the end of Week 5. One night during this pivotal week in your recovery from Trump news, you decide to go outside and stare with wonder at the canopy of stars in the night sky. You feel at one with the universe and forget all about the events of November 8, 2016.
Week 6: You finally decide to tackle that screenplay idea that's been kicking around in your head since college. Over the course of a frenzied two-night period, you complete the screenplay and find an agent for your opus. A bidding war ensues between three major Hollywood studios and eventually, you sell to Paramount Pictures for a cool $1.25 million—a mere four days after you began work on the project. On Wednesday evening, you watch with amazement and gratitude as a pack of birds fly dangerously close to your head en route to their next destination. Your wife informs you those birds are actually bats.
Week 7-Week 531: You miss the announcement by the Greatest Most Great Supreme Leader™ (a title Trump gave himself around week three of your self-imposed boycott) about the mandatory 8 p.m. curfew and are promptly rounded up by the Good Guys™. You are transported to a local MAGA camp where you are assigned to a temporary workstation. The rest of your days are spent laboring to build grandiose Trump properties on the grounds where historical buildings once stood (e.g. the Empire State Building, the White House, etc). When your body gives out and you are no longer meeting daily quotas, you are thrown from the roof of a property you helped build. On the bright side, you get the opportunity to toil alongside once-famous dissidents such as Jim Acosta, Meryl Streep, and LeBron James.