Field Notes From Real Life: Day 1

Monday, July 6/9:00 A.M.

It’s still early so it hasn’t hit me yet. I have had some pretty good parameters around phone usage for morning and evening for the past few weeks. I had already taken the phone out of the bedroom removing the temptation for in bed scrolling. Mornings are my favorite part of the day and I reserve them for sitting outside, prayer, journaling, writing, and thinking.

Same thing in the evening. Without access to the phone while I’m in bed I read or pray until I fall asleep. 

The rest of the day is where the trouble lies. Especially afternoons where I reach the doldrums of energy for the day until getting a second wind before dinner. So I’m trying to be proactive in anticipation of those times. On days when I don’t work the rough scaffolding for the day will look like this: 

Rough Outline of the Day:

A.M.

5:00-7:00   Coffee and thinking, writing, reading. 

7:00-9:00   Tidy, make a meal plan, start laundry.

9:00-10:00 Workout. Weights, stretching, vibration plate, walk.

10:00-11:00 Garden, bees, errands, studying. 

11:00-1:00 Housework, lunch. 

P.M.

1:00-3:00 Reading, writing. 

3:00-5:00 Unfinished chores, reading, writing. 

5:00-7:00 Making dinner, cleanup. 

7:00-9:00 Movie or YouTube. 

9:00 Get ready for bed, final tidy up and reset for morning. 

Prayers, reading, lights out. 

This schedule is more about the order of the day than keeping to the specific times. Some days may be full of errands, others the whole day may be mostly beekeeping or gardening. Work days may only be able to include the barest of necessities from the list around the edges. 

9:00 P.M.

So far it’s so much easier than I expected. But it’s only the first day. I got a lot of little things done around the house I’d been meaning to get to, checked on the bees and read the second half of a book. (Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali) It wasn’t really hard to fill the time when I normally would have reached for my phone with reaching for a book instead.

The most crucial thing I noticed was that I felt like my day was slow. The normal feeling of not having enough time evaporated. The feeling of distracted overwhelm calmed. I thought “this is who I used to be.”

I did have a couple of notifications from X pop up because I don’t think I realized I had all these notifications turned on. Didn’t click on them as I normally would have so I felt like that was a win especially when they said “Breaking news".

At 5:30 I turned on the TV and watched a couple of podcasts about current events. Remember it’s the short form content (videos under 60 seconds) that is the most dangerous to our brains. But a 20 minute discussion of a single topic, yes, please. Then an episode of a new series.

I saw a suggestion to take a small stack of index cards paper clipped together and keep them wherever you keep your phone. It’s about the same size so when you reach for your phone the index cards are there and you write down your thoughts. I’m definitely doing that.

I’m sure next week will be more interesting because I’ll be a week in. Let me know if you have questions!

See you next week!