Pulling the Plug
It's currently 10:40pm and I'm just getting started on my blog post for tomorrow (Monday), but for a change, procrastination isn't the reason. Today, I pulled the plug on 2008.
Last night when I came home to my apartment, I noticed a curious thing--only half of my lights worked. The living room? Yes. The bedroom where the wireless Internet is hooked up? No. The bathroom? No. I deduced in my infinite mechanical wisdom that obviously something was wrong with the wiring in my high-rise condo building and the best thing to do was...go to bed and pray it was magically fixed in the morning.
This is my very female solution to all mechanical problems, by the way. Is the tire looking low? Enh. Ignore it. Maybe it will get better. Is the cabinet falling off the hinges a little? Maybe using it more would help it regain its...uh...mojo.
Needless to say, I woke up this morning and my lighting problem was not fixed. (By now it is probably obvious to all the men who read this blog what had happened. But bear with me. I'm trying to re-create my mindset.) "Well," I thought. "I'd better call the building manager, but I'm sure he's going to say the whole block is out, or something." So I decided to forget about it and deal with it later in the afternoon when I had a little free time.
And so I went about my day, not worrying about the lighting problem, and eventually, something magical happened--I stopped caring. You see, without the Internet, I really couldn't get any work done. And you know what that forced me to do? RELAX. I watched hours and hours of DVDs. I called old friends and chatted forever. I smeared on a whitening face mask and chased my little dog around the apartment. I daydreamed and looked out the window. I even made a list of things I should do...but maybe not today. Maybe tomorrow, I'd do them. And so when the building manager called and talked me through how to throw the circuit breakers in my apartment and the power magically came back on, I was little bummed.
I must say, it made me realize how miserable I am at keeping the sabbath. Normally my Sundays consist of rushing here and there, running errands, frantically writing, and loads upon loads of laundry--in short, nothing that involves reflection on higher things, and nothing that recharges the soul. And so today, I made a promise to myself and you know who that I'm going to start taking the sabbath off. I'm going to commit to unplugging and force myself to spend the day enjoying the beauty of life.
It sounds so simple, doesn't it? And yet 2008 is a very addictive drug. Staying away from email and the information super highway will be hard--but if today is any proof, I will be a happier, healthier person for unplugging, even just once a week.
--May
4 comments:
Very good words of advice. Maybe I should abandon the phone and comp once a week, too (though hard when you're a freelancer, as you well know).
What a great reminder. We Americans (or at least this American) are so programmed to get things done that it's hard not to use Sunday after church as catch up day. But if we're made in God's image,then we need time to play and recharge and remember where we come from.
And May, don't feel bad. Once when we lived in France and my husband was who-knows-where on a business trip, I actually called my landlord and he came all the way over to my house (because I was new to France and couldn't speak well enough on the phone for him to understand what the heck I was saying) just to have him show me the circuit breaker box. Ooh how embarrassing. Especially for a former science teacher. Ouch!
The freedom of simplicity is a beautiful thing.
Love Hoot
I just realized that I said my sabbaths don't involve any time for reflection on higher things.
I meant, after church. Hahaha
But my church is an hour-long commute so the problem is that once I'm downtown and the service concludes, I tend to spend the rest of the day errand running. THAT'S my problem.
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