On, In and Around Mondays: 3 Ways I Quit Technology

This is how it happens.

One moment I am happily gazing at my computer screen. The next moment I feel tired. Or is it hungry? Maybe I want a piece of chocolate. No. Maybe it is the piano I am wanting.

I turn away and wash a dish, clean out a drawer, go outside, play the piano. Whatever seems like the next thing.



It used to be that I couldn't listen to the tiredness, the hunger, the wanting. Why didn't I listen?



Listening is the first thing. It helps me know when to forget about blogging, tweeting, checking email. It helps me remember to look up, and out, beyond.



Tea is the second thing. At four o' clock every day, I find Creme Earl Grey, Bagatelle, Granada Green or African Red Bush. I sit on the back porch, stare at the little garden. My mind wanders. Ten things that were bothering me float away on air, or so it seems. I can see what needs to be done, or not done.





A weekly technology Sabbath is the third thing. I take mine on Sundays. The woods are calling, and the bridges. Or the little lanes. Ten more things that were bothering me disappear into the green, the water, the trails, the stones.



Listening. Daily tea time. A single Sabbath day. I quit technology with these, and then I return. Happily.



Rockefeller and Kitchawan park photos, by L.L. Barkat.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place.

Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below. If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

RELATED: Write specifically about your relationship to technology and you can add your link at TheHighCalling.org.

Technology Fails Me Home

Rain tap taps. Air is frost-ready. Weeks go by and, still, I have no heat. It is coming at last, later this week, but in the meantime here I am...

Sitting by the fire. Lugging logs from the garage. Tending, turning. Warming hands. Bundling. Noticing.

Like Gerald May in his wilderness, I sit alone and stare at flames dancing. They melt away thoughts, worries, logic and analysis. I find myself, as he did, feeling there is nothing in particular to do. This amber movement mesmerizes, frees. Unlike May, I also sit with others and wonder, is this how hearth came to be associated with home?

When the house is chilled as it is now, we come from our respective corners and meet unplanned before the fire. My big girl draws, paints, writes, leans on my leg as I read, think. I reach out and press her long dark hair between my fingers. I put my hand on her back, and she, unawares, curls her toes against mine. Little One comes too, chatting, smiling, tossing her hair and tangling it. I brush it back in place and smile too.

I love my technologies (yes, Sam, I do). But for these few weeks I marvel that at least one of them has failed me home.

Birch on Fire photo by L.L. Barkat.

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