Hello there.

It’s been a while.

The week offline was eye opening. I’m still gathering my thoughts, and an action plan, but here are a few things that surfaced from my week offline.

No evening screen time equals plentiful and quality sleep.

Most evenings I put my son down for bed and then read for an hour or two and then went to bed too. I’ve been getting more sleep and falling asleep easier without any evening television or computer time. I’m going to try really hard to eliminate any screen time in the two hours before I go to bed. Good sleep and enough sleep are so important for my health and mood.

Traveling and not having a cell phone can be a pain.

I did end up borrowing a cell phone to make a phone call twice and had others contact me on my husband’s cell phone a few times. This was due to the logistics of travel and meeting up with family. Oh, and my mom and I got lost and even after asking for directions from a gas station attendant we couldn’t find our destination.

The no cell phone experiment actually just proved to me that I have cut way down on how much I use a cell phone since moving to the Isle of Man. It’s not a big part of how I communicate. And concurrently, it’s also not a big bill. My husband has just spent more on a week of cell phone usage while traveling than he has in the ten months we’ve lived in the Isle of Man.

Television can be hard to avoid.

We’ve been staying with family and I have either missed out on some evening conversations or inadvertently watched some television so I could socialize. It’s only been a few hours at most and it was usually a hockey game that was on. I’m a fair weather hockey fan as it is so my eyes weren’t glued to the screen.

Taking a break from the Internet feels good.

In a good way, I didn’t think about email or social media or blog maintenance while on my break. My laptop was shut, my iPod was without power and I was too busy visiting family, getting great sleep and reading to think about the state of my Gmail account. I also spent more time on myself. I got more workouts in, took a longer than usual shower and kept my legs shaved (a rare occurrence) and even wore more make-up (still not much).

One thing I did miss was Skype. While I don’t use a cell phone much I do use Skype to talk to family and friends. Katy and I usually email or Skype every other day so I’m itching for some twin communication.

I’ll have more thoughts on this experiment in a few weeks along with my plan to limit and create more productive online time for myself.

Anyone else take some time offline? How did you find it?

And so it begins…

One week.

No television.

No Internet.

No cell phone.

I’ll admit I am daunted by this. Possibly a touch scared.

In some ways I’ve picked a perfect week to do this. I’m away from home and my regular routines.

In some ways I’ve picked the worst week to do this. I’m away from home and my regular routines.

There are also some things happening with writing, my book and our television appearance. While I have let the folks concerned know I will be offline, and even given them the land line phone number they can reach me on, it’s not ideal.

We live in a connected world. Expectations have changed. We’re supposed to check email multiple times a day and be available to take phone calls at any hour.

And we’re suffering for it. The easy access and connection that was touted as the new way to create work life balance has, instead, stolen the life part out of the equation.

Leave work early so you can watch your kid’s soccer game but then… you’re on your Blackberry the whole time so you barely see them play.

Take off at noon on a Friday so you can get out of town but then… you have to check in every few hours on your work laptop to see if a client has emailed you.

Where is the real rest? Where is the break? When do you get to turn off so you can turn on to what’s in front of you and what’s next to you and what’s all around you?

Wifi is overrated.

Cell phones are overrated.

3G is overrated.

So I’m taking a big break from it. All of it.

Will you join me? 

You don’t have to do the whole week or completely disconnect. That’s not feasible for everyone.

But I trust you know what you can do. Be it a few days completely off or a week with just your cell phone and checking email once a day. Challenge yourself. See what trying something new brings you.

You can sign up over there on the right and pledge for a week of less screen and more living.

Bake a cake, paint your garage door, read, play a board game, sleep, sew, knit, clean, make a mess, write a short story by hand, give your full attention to the people around you,  instead of checking your email on your phone while in a line up, talk to the person next to you.

It will be fun.

While I’ll be without cell phone, without laptop and without television, I will have the screen on my Kindle. If I weren’t on the road I would have cut that screen too but I didn’t want to lug a lot of library books around with me. If you have a similar hurdle, make a small exception and then join in on the challenge.

Have a lovely week and I’ll be back on April 10th.

Cheers,

Rachel

I’ll be offline from midnight April 3nd to midnight April 9th. If you leave a comment or email me I will try and respond the following week.

A week unplugged is a lot. But could you do a day?

The National Day of Unplugging is an initiative from the Sabbath Manifesto, a creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world.

Sounds like my kind of project.

I’ll be taking part and if you’d like to join in you can sign up here. I can’t figure out how to sign up if you don’t have a Facebook account. If anyone figures it out let me know.

Recently I found this post on a blog called Last American Childhood after the writer left a comment here. It was Internet serendipity. I just reread the Pressfield book the writer quotes below. I just wrote a few hundred words the other night after closing my Internet browser. I just renewed my commitment to acting with intention and no more Zombie surfing.

Rachel (there are so many of us) writes about her decision to cancel her Facebook account but it could be about anything that we’re giving our time and attention to that isn’t nourishing us in some way. From Don’t be scared at Last American Childhood:

… how to explain to a four year old why you are staring at the computer looking at pictures of someone you just saw that morning who lives across the street rather than playing trains with him. A question I’m no longer willing to put myself in the position of having to answer. It is one thing to bat a child away because you have to work, talk to a friend, make dinner, relax or work on a song or a story. But to do it for no other reason than to find out a friend you haven’t seen in 10 years got a chocolate-vanilla swirl ice cream with too much vanilla is unconscionable. There is no explanation. As Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, “It’s one thing to lie to yourself, it’s another to believe it.” Am I going to let yet another decade go by without publishing a novel? Yet another 5 years go by before I finish the last Dimestore EP? Another year go by before I put Wally’s baby pictures into something resembling a scrapbook? The first daffodils of the season are in full bloom. There’s opera in the air. I’m canceling my Facebook account, and I’ll see you outside in the world, or in my memories, or in my dreams. (I’m totally fine — this is not meant to sound dramatic, but worse than dramatic is the giving away of your life and your time gradually, by degrees, in a series of tiny, undetectable degrees.)

This is a gifted writer. I’m glad she’s finding more time to work on her art. I want to read that novel. I want to listen to those songs.

Join me this weekend?

Put away your smart phone and shut down the family computer on Friday night.

Take that time you would have spent checking email, browsing JCrew or pinning craft projects on Pinterest and use it to feed yourself in some way. Cook, read, rest or create. Take those tiny undetectable degrees back.

They don’t feel like much in a day.

But in a month, in a year, in a life time, they add up.

Those small degrees are novels, half marathons and vital sleep. They are sex and fun and love and finding something new and wonderful.

They are yours.

Take them back.