My Unplugged Weekend

This past weekend, I went on a technology fast of sorts. It wasn’t preplanned, and yet it wasn’t accidental, either.

On a typical weekend in our house, when my little one has his lay-down after lunch and my older one is either playing the Wii with her father or playing outside with friends, I bring out the laptop and get to work. I peruse social media, news sites, entertainment sites, and eventually (hopefully) do some writing on my work-in-progress du jour. It’s a fairly routine carbon-copy of the other five days of the week when my daughter is at school and the house lulls itself into a mid-afternoon sleepiness.

But this weekend, when my daughter and I arrived home from a morning dodging snowflakes and running errands, I decided to let the laptop sleep. Instead, I decided, I would read a book. And not on my Nook, either, because I knew if I awoke the Nook, I would be lured onto Twitter and Words with Friends via my Wi-Fi connection. Nope, instead I cracked open an actual paper book (The Likeness by TanaFrench, if you’re curious—quite good so far). I read for several hours while my daughter visited at her grandparents’ house, while our little guy took his rest, and while the hubby enmeshed himself in a season of hockey on the Playstation. Such a tranquil way to spend a chilly, gray afternoon.

I kept the trend going that evening, and taught myself how to de-code crocheting instructions for a scarf while watching old episodes of Northern Exposure on Netflix. I felt so relaxed and decompressed by the time I went to bed Saturday night that I decided to treat myself to another unplugged day on Sunday. Ahh, bliss.

This morning, after taking my daughter to the bus and practicing some flexibility-centered yoga, I sat at the computer to catch up on everything I had missed over the weekend. Interestingly, it wasn’t much. To my mild surprise, nothing earth-shatteringly important was announced on Facebook over the weekend that managed to elude my attention. No life-altering tweets went unread. No time-sensitive updates hit my accounts in Good Reads or Figment. In fact, I barely missed a beat.

In this age of constant information overload, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking we must always be connected to our electronic media in order to stay relevant, stay in touch, or stay informed. But the truth is, the world won’t stop spinning if you disconnect for a few days. In fact, if you do, you may find yourself far better able to deal with everything the world throws at you when you jump back in.

So after a successful and peaceful weekend of truly connecting with my husband, my children, and my interests outside the “virtual” world, I’ve decided to make all of my weekends “unplugged.” Who knows, maybe I’ll actually finish this scarf I’ve started.

"Free" is Easily Wasted

I’ve been noticing lately how a remarkable amount of my “free” time gets mysteriously wasted each day. I start off with the best of intentions: exercising first thing, showering and dressing before my husband leaves the house, getting my daughter to the school bus on time with (usually) everything she needs.

Then it all falls apart.

While my little one catches his favorite Disney Junior shows, I check e-mail. Two to three hours later, I finally get off the computer, having answered e-mails, investigated several lucrative e-mail offers, checked Facebook, “liked” several posts, replied to several more, clicked on one too many YouTube links, checked CNN and the Weather Channel for major happenings, and caught up on my blogs.

Yep. Two to three hours of nothing, really.

Then I’ll get up and do a few chores before lunch. After little one has eaten and is lying down for his nap, I repeat an abbreviated version of the morning computer routine before starting to write. But wait – before I start to write, I need to play just a couple games of solitaire, you know, to get the creative juices flowing.

An hour later, I start to write. By then, I only have maybe an hour before little one wakes up, my daughter gets home from school, and the homework/dinner/bedtime routine kicks in. Many days, as I’m anticipating my darling husband’s arrival, I have to wonder, “What did I really do today?”

It’s been said a million times: we all have 24 hours in the day, and none of us knows how many of those 24-hour days we have in front of us. So why on earth would I squander a single moment of any of them? Let alone many, many, many moments?

So here’s the deal. For the next week, I have created a schedule for myself (no, I will not post the schedule as I’d like to keep that little bit of crazy to myself) on which I have blocked out every minute of every day. Some of the blocks are for things like checking e-mail and blogs, reading, and working on my Sunday crossword. But other blocks are for actual seriously productive activities, like tackling the spring cleaning list I never got to in the spring. Or working on the Christmas stocking for little one that’s been sitting in a box under my bed for three years. Or – gasp! – writing. And for the entire week, I will avoid at all costs playing solitaire.

So who’s with me? What activities are sucking the time and productivity from your life? Could you swap them for activities that are more meaningful and fulfilling?

Let’s live every day – every moment – to the fullest. I don’t expect anyone ever cried from their deathbed, “If only I’d played more solitaire!”