Not surprisingly, I haven’t sat down to write something about the end results from being unplugged for the weekend. Part of that was because of school: we had our usual class on Thursday night, then another on Saturday morning. I’m not a morning person as it stands, but waking up for school? I was supposed to be done with that in high school.
[Update: It’s taken long enough to finish this entry that we had class again this Thursday, but in my defense, I had to prepare a two-person PowerPoint presentation. Aside from never having used PowerPoint before, I had a microscopic amount of assistance from my partner. Grrrr…]
Nevertheless, I’ve found ways to occupy myself that haven’t involved writing. Some have been productive; some… not so much. But I’m back to the blog and I’m being honest when I say I realized a few things about myself and society as a whole during the course of that weekend.
Perhaps the most important lesson was that if you’re going to write something by hand, consider your posture and body positioning before doing so. I did it for two nights sitting in bed, my back against a bunch of pillows, my knees pulled up and the pad of paper resting against my thighs. It was only two nights, mind you, but it made me glad I was schedule to visit the chiropractor that Tuesday.
Things were feeling out-of-kilter in my hand and forearm and stretching wasn’t fixing the problem. I told the chiro about what I’d been doing, she felt my hand, shifted bones in three places (which was actually kinda painful) and told me to apply ice and stretch out the top of my forearm by pushing my hand down with my arm extended. I never used the ice—adjusting my hand and stretching cleared things up just fine.
Admittedly, I turned on my laptop as soon as the weekend was over (i.e., shortly after midnight). I was concerned because I’d been reading before, put the book down for a moment, then woke up an hour later. If I tried reading and accidentally fell asleep again, there’s no way I would have been able to sleep that night. (It was hard enough with just the single nap.) So it turns out that my computer keeps me awake and it’s an excellent distraction from sleep. Using websites like Facebook and YouTube make distractions that much easier—you lose track of time and suddenly it’s 3:00 in the morning.
But it’s almost impossible to unplug completely and avoid all electronic versions of entertainment. Surfing the Internet, watching TV, listening to music—it’s all so accessible and it’s all been thrust into the forefront of our lives. We turn them on without a second thought and sometimes have them on without paying attention to them. I’m guilty of that one: I listen to mp3s on my laptop a lot while I’m using it. I may be doing other things, but having some sound in the background… would gray noise suffice? TV static? Humidifier? Electric heater? Possibly.
The easiest way to avoid temptation was to spend large chunks of Friday and Saturday helping my friends move. You might accuse me of cheating because we had the radio while packing and in the car when driving from place to place and that may be a valid accusation, but in that case, it works as a distraction from the doldrums of repetitive motion like when I was working in the kitchen: “Lift item off shelf, put in box… lift item off shelf, put in box… put box on floor, tape shut, put empty box on counter… lift item off shelf, put in box…”
But the point is while I kept my hands busy and my mind occupied with what needed to get packed, I never thought about what e-mails or videos on YouTube might be waiting for me when I got home. It was a relief from any temptation that might have arisen during that time.
[Given that the official experiment is done, I don’t feel overly guilty is saying that this blog entry might not be complete, but I want to post it so that people can read it while I go to a friend’s house for “Bad Movie Night.” Yes, I’m leaving to enjoy a type of electronic entertainment, but perhaps it’s better that I’m doing it with a group of people instead of just myself and the TV… something else to consider in the future. In the meantime, enjoy the weekend and try not to spend it all in front of your computers.]
