Field Notes from Real Life: Week 2
woman hangs sheets on a clothesline in the sun
I am alive over here! (as she shouts into the void)
If the first week was full of adjusting to not knowing what was going on all the time with everyone…everywhere, the second week has been about settling into this more disconnected life. Before I felt like I didn’t have enough time for anything, everything, including my thinking felt hurried. I would often fantasize about renting a hotel room and taking piles of books and empty journals, my Bible and escaping into deep thoughts and big ideas. To read deeply and have time to soak in that reading.
Turns out all I really needed was to get off of social media.
The good news is our minds are not permanently rewired. My ability to read or write or just sit and think for an hour returned when the lure of the phone went away. I am very encouraged by this because to be honest I was pretty worried that the forgetfulness and brain fog was just how it was in the modern world ruled by our smart phones.
Here’s the week 2 rundown:
Checked on the bees.
Worked 2 ½ days.
Lunch, shopping, and a long visit with a dear friend.
Lunch after church with friends.
Spent a lot of time looking up, at a sunrise, the stars, birds, airplanes flying overhead.
Currently reading several books. (I used to do this all the time before phones)
Not only read but annotated. I’ll cover this more in a future post.
Planned a big project that has been in the back of my mind and gained clarity about direction.
Organized my Zettelkasten system of thoughts and ideas. Also more about this in a future post.
Watched a couple of movies and a good bit of YouTube content for news and long form information.
Walked with a friend.
Planned a trip.
Read through some of my journals from the 90s.
Talked to my daughter on the phone.
Cleaned the house.
Hung sheets on the line instead of using the dryer.
Cooked some delicious dinners.
Worked out.
Spent more time in prayer as I went about my day.
Most of the things here are things I often complained that I didn’t have time to get done.
This second week I found myself wanting to reach for my phone more. While the first week felt like relief, this week I’m feeling a bit of deprivation in odd moments around other activities. I would occasionally pick up my phone to check email, which I normally never even look at. Maybe I should use this time to delete the thousands of emails hanging around.
I had been looking for boredom and this week it found me. Instead of feeling as if I never had enough time, this week I felt a real shift happen. For the first time in a long time a day felt long in a good way. Or rather the actual length of a day. Instead of looking up from my phone and wondering where the last half an hour went, I knew, As I climbed into bed each night I could recount the day. I knew where my time had been spent and what my attention had gone to.
And then there's looking around. Out the kitchen window there’s a garden and this week chipmunks were frolicking, a bunny was chewing on weeds, hummingbirds swept from flower to flower. All of which I would have missed along with sunrises, clouds outlined in proverbial silver by the sun, evening skies where Venus shone brightly. This being aware of my surroundings is a shift. The phone acts like a casino and pulls us in and once inside it’s very difficult to leave. I liked being present and doing one thing or nothing at all. Our phones have us looking down so much. Don’t forget to look up and look around. The world around us is full of simple joys and visible treasures.