We'll See How This One Goes

I'm unplugging for Lent this year.

What does this mean, exactly?  Well, for me, for the next forty days at least, it means...  

No Facebook (obviously).  Or Instagram (which I just have to stalk follow my kids) or Twitter (which I use even less).

But also no cell phone/tablet data.  Which I guess means I'm going to have to start reading books printed on actual paper at bedtime.  I better get a sleep mask for Better Half.

No computer outside of the hours between 5:30 am and 3:00 pm  Pacific (when I'm working).

No blog.  I wonder if I remember how to keep a diary?  I think the last diary I kept with any sort of regularity was when I was a sophomore in high school.  Do they even make diaries any more?

I'd love to unplug twenty-four hours a day, but I'm a long-term substitute for a virtual classroom, and in order to collect the paycheck, being "plugged in" is kind of part of the deal.  

Why give up this, you ask? Why not chocolate, or wine, or (gasp!) coffee? 

Actually, you probably didn't, but I want it out there on the 'net, since if you can find it on the World Wide Web, it's gospel truth.  :o)

And the reason is simple.  I'm just not strong enough to give up coffee.  

But in all seriousness,

I want to give up something  that is going to be difficult for me.  Really difficult.  

Technology...Facebook...my smartphone...email...it all allows me to stay connected to the people I love the most outside of the people who live here in this house with me.  The people that, honestly,  I'm a little scared will forget about me if I go off of the grid for even one day...let alone forty.

But that's a chance I'm going to have to take.

Because this is also something that I think is going to be really good for me.  

I feel guilty about the amount of time I spend plugged in to a virtual existence.  

I am away from my family all day long.  And yet for the few short hours we get to be together on a given day, I'm "working" on the computer, trolling Facebook, reading the news on my phone, sending texts, doing the New York Times Crossword Puzzle (or trying to) ad nauseum.    

It's ridiculous.  

My oldest son will likely leave home never to live here again apart from school holidays in less than two years.  My youngest daughter will follow suit in less than six.

My oldest daughter lives two thousand miles away.  I'd give anything to have all those moments where I was too distracted by cyberspace to give her my undivided attention back again.  

Who knows?  Maybe forty days of being unplugged from the world I left and still miss so very much will help me to discover my purpose in this one.  

Or maybe it won't.  

Either way.