Unplugging

I made a decision a couple of days ago to try to unplug...a little.  There's a lot of chatter on the Mommy blogs right now about the role technology plays in our lives, how much energy we give it, how much does it take us away from the things that matter most, i.e. those little souls we are here to nurture.

I sat at my desk and considered deactivating my facebook account all together.  Ultimately I decided against it, I do after all maintain a page for my company so regardless of my personal use I would still be there for professional use.  Of course my company page has nothing to do with my bejeweled obsession (by the way, over 540K points in ONE MINUTE, oh yeah baby...I'm obsessed!)

Since I couldn't take the full plunge and purge facebook from my daily life I took a baby step, I deleted the app from my smart phone.  I must say, it felt....liberating!  And also odd as I looked at the empty space where the desktop icon used to be. 

The other baby step I took, I shut off my laptop.  I have a laptop in my kitchen and it is traditionally on...all....the.....time.  But not anymore.  I powered it down.  And shut the lid! 

I haven't noticed any extra free time coming my way but I have reduced my Mommy guilt-a little.

So, where's the balance between me time and me overtime?  I'm not sure.  I do feel though that I was spending too much time online.  The thing is, it's not like I sat down as soon as I got home and never moved until bedtime, but it's 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, the next thing I know I've lost close to a full hour of time.  Time that could be spent reading a book, doing a crossword puzzle, baking some bread and, most importantly, playing with my son.  Time that could be spent soaking in a hot bath.  Time that could be spent sleeping!  Life gets so busy sometimes that all I want to do is hide, to stick my head into the laptop and ignore it all.  The bad thing though is that the stressors are still there when I come up for air and sometimes, sometimes they are worse! 

All this technology is a double edged sword if you ask me.  Yes it frees up time on one end-thank you for not making me hand wash my cloths!  But it's also a huge time sucker, a vortex if you will, into which all our downtime disappears.  A vacuum of free time, of leisure time, of time to connect with real life, flesh and blood people.  I've often told Dimitri that human beings were not designed to life in a cyber world, we were not made to only chat on line or via text, we are pack animals by nature and we need face to face contact.  To get that contact sometimes, we have to take a couple baby steps and unplug.