Lately I have been coming home late and I am tired. When my partner is not home, I plop myself in front of the computer to watch TV.
I have spent all day in front of a screen. I have cranked away on emails and worked and reworked drafts of Word docs and then returned to emails. Sometimes I have a day with lovely meetings and one on one conversations with human beings. I love those moments. I am a fan of human beings.
But most of the day I am clicking and staring, clicking and forgetting to blink. Click. Click. Click. I come home hating screens, and then I think “I need to unplug” and then the not so brilliant thought enters my mind…I will just watch an episode of something mindless to relax.
Here is the deal…for me TV feels good like eating a pint of ice cream at one sitting feels good. And I think sometimes it is okay to indulge in that out of control feel goodness. But more screen time is not what I really need to relax. I need to step away from the screen. I have been thinking about this for a while yet still returning to bad reality shows at the end of the night.
Until a recent Saturday morning with nowhere to go and my loved one not at home. I decided to open a book and NOT a self-help book or business book. A novel, the Living by Annie Dillard.
I proceeded to read in bed for an hour.
I know this may be basic, simple knowledge…
but reading a good book in bed is extraordinary.
And the art of a good book read in bed may be dying.
This month and into the next, when I am craving an escape, when I need to unwind and let go,
I will pick up my fiction book and find a cozy nook.
(I may even take the book on the bus with me, instead of my iphone.)
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How to step away from the screen:
1. Find a fiction book to read
Find a fiction book in your home that you have not read. Open said book and begin reading.
2. Make time
Give yourself at least a half an hour to get into the book and hooked on the act of reading.
3. Keep book with you
Carry your book around with you. Sit down with it and read. Put book down for conversations, do not put book down for more screen time.
