Actively Unplugging

            I am wearing a new watch with this amazing feature:  it tells time!  That’s it! 

            I do have an Apple watch, all plugged in and ready to go.  It’s perfectly fine, works great, tracks my every step, my calories, and my heart rate.  It can even do an EKG – and I’ve done numerous ones.  I’m in sinus rhythm!  Yay!

            The Apple watch is a marvel, but what it does basically boils down to two things: First, it keeps me distracted because it goes off constantly.  Every text message, email, Ring doorbell-activating package delivery.  It pulsates on my wrist when I am driving and using the map app, which is helpful and yet intrusive.  It tells me to get up if I’m in danger of not reaching my “stand goal.”  Disturbingly, I now get phantom vibrations on my wrist when I’m not wearing it – just like I get on the right side of my rear end, where my iPhone sits in the pocket of my jeans or shorts.  Those phantom twitches creep me out.  Also spooky:  sometimes when I’m wearing the Apple watch, it just lights up red underneath.  What does it want?  What is it doing to me?

And second, it fills my head with all sorts of data about … well, me.  My steps. My movement.  My standing up.  My screen time – guess what, it keeps going up!  To be fair, that is because my family and I play numerous New York Times games (Wordle, Connections, Strands, the Mini, Letter Boxed, plus I do Sudoku and Tiles) and share our scores – for which I have zero regrets.  My husband, Mark, and I also use the Bible app, which has our online daily reading plan.

But that’s on my iPhone.  Not my Apple watch or iPad, or my Mac.  Yes, I have four devices.  Mark has even more, because he has an extra iPhone for work, a work computer, a laptop, and his home computer, plus his iPad.  When we go on trips, he has multiple navigation systems going at once, because we like to take the back roads.  So there we are trying to take the roads less traveled, even as we use extra technology to do it.  It drives me crazy.

            I have an iPad, and I don’t use it.  Well, actually, I do use it, every night, because I play the White Noise app on it when I sleep.  “Ocean Waves Crashing” is very restful.  But I could give it up – because I also have White Noise app on my phone!  I could just use that!  Now you might say, and you would be right to point it out, that I could just turn on an old-school box fan for white noise.  Well, ha ha, joke’s on you – I have one of those, too!  I use it in addition to the White Noise, so every night we go to sleep with the fan and the ocean!  Country and Western!  It’s like a wind tunnel in the bedroom!  We also have three dogs in there, and two of them snore.  So, I could use the decibel checker on my Apple watch, but I don’t wear it at night.

            Actually, I haven’t worn it for the better part of a week, and I don’t miss it.  In fact, I feel more relaxed because it’s not going off all the time.  It owned me and I didn’t even realize it.  I’m not using the iPad, except as a noise machine, and I could get an actual noise machine.  They still make them.

            I don’t do much with social media anymore, either.  I got off Twitter because it was a time suck.  I kept going down rabbit holes.  I am susceptible to conspiracy theories!  I admit it!  So I cut the cord on that, just quit cold turkey, and got another piece of my life back.

            I don’t know how to use Instagram, except to see what other people post.  Sometimes it goes into “vanish mode,” and I panic.

            I have two websites for my writing:  this one and my men’s health website, vitaljake.com.  I could use social media more effectively – or actually, at all – and boost my posts, and get a lot more traffic, and maybe even monetize the sites (although for the men’s health one, I will never take ads from any health-related products because I don’t want to lose my credibility) – but nobody is breaking down my door with offers.

            I like Facebook, but I hardly ever go on there.  For the same reason: it’s a time suck.  All of a sudden, an hour has gone by, and I have nothing to show for it.  So I steer pretty clear of it.  I know that I miss out on a lot, but I figure if it’s really important, people will call, text, email, or even, crazy thought, send a letter by snail mail.

            I’m unplugging, and it feels great. 

            The world is so much bigger than our little tiny screens.  I have a friend who is a second-grade teacher, and she said that many of her students’ parents are self-involved, on their devices all the time, and they put their kids in front of screens to entertain them.  They don’t help them with their homework, don’t eat together, don’t spend much quality time just hanging out and talking.  These seven-year-old kids even watch screens in the car – either their video games, or cartoons on their phones, or on the DVD screens in front of them.

Everyone loses here.  The kids are missing out, and so are the parents.  I have seen a bunch of articles on the benefits of banning cell phones in the classroom.  Here’s one, but there are plenty if you want to read up on it.  It takes 20 minutes for a child’s brain to refocus after being on the cell phone.

            When my daughter and son-in-law lived in Wyoming, we used to go to Yellowstone a lot.  It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world.  The scenery is truly breathtaking, it’s pristine.  You can see moose, elk, grizzly bears, bison, eagles, wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, owls – wild and often massive animals that just want to live their lives, and if you can respect that, you get the privilege of watching them.   Sadly, a lot of people don’t grasp this concept. That’s because either they have played so many video games that they think they’re in one, or they are just oblivious.  So yes, you can go to Yellowstone and see the Grand Tetons and stunning Alpine lakes and weird, multicolored sulphur pools and geysers, and rivers with trout that the bears are actively trying to catch and eat…

            Or you can watch it on your phone!  While you’re there!  I have walked around Yellowstone and stepped out of the way of oblivious people who aren’t looking at the scenery directly.  They’re looking at it on their screens as they take selfies.  They’re walking backward and holding up their selfie sticks, seeing wildflowers or mountains or giant bison as a backdrop, in their own rear-view mirrors.  They’re literally missing the forest for the trees – except the trees are just images on a screen!  They could be wallpaper on the phone, in the background just like my ocean sounds.  Fake images instead of fake noise. Or maybe you put a soundtrack to it for the next Instagram post.  Hello to all my fans and followers, I’m an influencer and I’m live-Tweeting at Old Faithful!

            I just cannot imagine that I will get to the end of my life and think, “Darn, I just wish I had spent more time on social media!”  Wish I had spent less time talking with the kids!  If I had just put in more screen time, maybe I could have made it past the easy level of Sudoku!  If only I had made more memes and reels!

©Janet Farrar Worthington

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Annoying everything

Well, it’s Monday.  That’s about the only reason I can find for why annoying people, and even an annoying animal, seem to be coming out of the woodwork today — and it’s still morning!  There’s plenty of time for more of them to show up!  For example:  I went to Starbucks to get coffee for Mark, who was so tired when he left for work that he forgot to take his travel mug.  He needs his coffee.  He’s also allergic to milk, so I ordered a Pike’s Place with soy. “One Pike’s Place with cream, anything else?” said the girl. Yes, I said, it needs to be soy, not cream, and explained why. “And did you want another drink?” No, I said. “Well, when you kept talking, I thought you wanted another drink.” What the heck!  No, I just didn’t want to give my husband something that would make him sick…  To quote Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!”  When I kept talking — who says stuff like that?

Then, I went to Fry’s, the West Coast version of Kroger.  I had just started to unload my cart, and the guy said, “Fry’s card?”  I was behind my cart, trying to get my groceries up on the conveyor belt as fast as I could, because there were people behind me.  I said, “Yes, just a minute.”  The man folded his hands.  Let’s just pause for a moment to reflect on how supremely annoying this was.  He refused to ring me up until I handed him my card.  He said it was store policy.  I know it’s not, because I shop there all the time, and they usually just start scanning away as soon as the groceries start rolling along toward the cash register.   And yet, there he was, with his hands primly folded in front of him like — I don’t know, a schoolmarm or something.  So I pushed my cart up a few feet, handed him my card, then went back to loading up.  What the heck!  

And then, the icing on the cake,  I pulled into my driveway, and just standing there, basically blocking the entrance, was a coyote.  He looked right at me, brazen as anything.  Such contempt!  Such sass!  If he’d had a middle finger, he would have flipped me off.  I moved my car closer, and he finally moved away and peeled off into the woods, but I’m even getting attitude from wildlife today…  What the heck!

Now, the refrigerator repairman is here.  So far, so good.  He seems to be pretty nice, and the only good thing about having so many failing appliances is that at least I know the guy, because he’s been here for the dishwasher and garbage disposal — both of which, like the refrigerator, turned out to be 13 years old, from when the previous owners rehabbed their kitchen.

Now, I realize that the actions of other people are their problem, not mine.  I know, I know … be the change you wish to see, I can’t change the world but I can change myself, poop happens, deal with it, turn the other cheek, look for the good.  But it’s hard to act like Jesus or Gandhi when I’m feeling more like Ralph Kramden on “The Honeymooners,” muttering, “One of these days, pow!  Right in the kisser!”  Or Moe Howard of “The Three Stooges” … “why, I oughta…”   I guess that’s the point.  It is hard, but I don’t want to sit around muttering all day.  So this is me, officially letting it go and moving on with what I hope will be a better day.
 

This post and all blog content Ⓒ Copyright Janet Farrar Worthington.

 

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I remember sleep

Boy, am I cranky.  Oh, didn’t you sleep well?  No, as a matter of fact, I didn’t sleep at all.

The great physician, Sir William Osler, once said, “The man who is well wears a crown that only the sick can see.”  I have always been struck by that quote, because it just goes to show that whatever you don’t have, you can find somebody who has it and envy the heck out of him or her, because you have just identified the luckiest person in the world.

The man who sleeps in bed next to me looks like freaking royalty.  Every night, my husband rolls onto his right side and instantly it’s lights out for a good five hours, at which point — usually between 4 and 5 in the morning — he rolls over onto his left side and sleeps equally well.  I know this, because I have lost the ability to sleep.  I used to be one of the great sleepers.  Anytime was potentially nap time for me.  I could drop right off and be out like a light for hours — and still get a good night’s sleep that night.  I pitied the people in the Lunesta commercials.  Even now, I know people who can’t sleep without medication, and I have vowed I will never be one of them.  I don’t want to be addicted to anything.

And yet, not sleeping gets real old, real fast.  At 5:15 this morning, I officially thumbed my nose at the night and gave it up, figuring that sleep was not going to be happening for me.  The good news, by the time everybody else got up, I had washed a load of dishes and was on my second load of laundry, so as Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, “I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.”  A big thumbs up there.
What have I done to cause this?  Was it the glass of wine I had last night?  Was it the coffee I had in the afternoon?  Yeah, sure, maybe.  I am so tired — so to speak — of wondering what particular rigid rule of “sleep hygiene” I have broken.   What one single thing I have done or not done that is keeping me from sleeping on this particular night.  Even when I do everything right — none of which I used to need to do, by the way, to be able to sleep — I’m still quite capable of not sleeping.  I can go for a three-hour hike, or run a couple miles on the treadmill, and be unfazed by the fresh air and/or physical activity later.
Melatonin?  I’ve tried it, I had terrible dreams, so I stopped.  But I’ve had terrible dreams without it, so maybe I should revisit it.  Menopause?  Uh, no, thanks for asking.  If it is, I’m being doubly screwed, because I’m still treated to that delight once a month.  Is it hereditary?  Well, if that’s the case, I’m screwed, too.  My dad is a terrible sleeper, has been for as long as I can remember, so that’s great.
As I lay there last night, I remember thinking, “well, this is it, and it’s going to be this way for the rest of my life, and then I’ll die.”  I have positive thoughts like that because I’m a people person.
I even listened to a hypnosis tape last night and it didn’t help.  Au contraire, it revved me up!  Instead of letting go of all my worries, as the hypnotist softly and creepily urged me to do, I started listing them and thinking about them.  My brain was going a mile a minute.  So, I failed that.  I’m going to try it again tonight, though, just in case some subliminal thing is happening and deep down I am learning to retrain my brain.
I don’t want medicine.  I just want what every child and teenager has — the ability to sleep and sleep and sleep.  Is that too much to ask?  Apparently, it is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB2yiIoEtXw
This post and all blog content Ⓒ Copyright Janet Farrar Worthington.
 
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I’ll get right to it

I have been meaning to write about procrastination for a while, but I kept putting it off. I’ve been procrastinating for years; one of these days I’m going to have to get some help for this problem. No, really, if it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done. As Mark Twain said, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” Or, as somebody else said, I like my work. It fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours. And drumroll…the best part about procrastination: You’re never bored, because there are all kinds of things that you could be doing!

For years, my writing method has been to think of a bunch of other stuff — doing laundry is a fine example — that’s suddenly very important.  Then I waste copious amounts of time, hours, days, or weeks, doing that, until the torment of not doing the actual work is so great that I just have to do it.  My friend, Scott Price (http://www.gladtobeyourdad.com) recently wrote about this in a newsletter:  “Procrastination is wanting or even having a plan, but not working it.”  It’s amazing, to one interested in words, how often the rear end figures into discussions of procrastination:  I need a good kick in the pants; to poop, figuratively, or get off the pot.  As Eliza Doolittle shouted at Ascot:  “Come on, Dover!  Move yer bloomin’ arse!”  And yet, as countless bathroom graffiti wits have written, “here I sit, broken-hearted… ”  Got work to do, can’t get started.

I blame spiritual attack.  I do.  Laziness — guilty; fear of success or failure — definitely; resentment that I have to do something I don’t want to do — yeah, there’s that, too….  But call it gremlins or the devil — the bad spirits in this world want us not to succeed.  Therefore, in administering myself this butt-kickin’ I think I am moving in the right direction.  Forward, even if it’s just one small, reluctant step at a time.   New goal:  Actual momentum.

P.S.  About the picture of my To Do list:  I don’t know why it’s sideways.  I have spent 20 minutes — wasting time is my destiny — taking that stupid picture and every time I upload it to this website, it goes sideways.  This pretty much sums up how things are going around here.

P.S.S.  The picture seems to be fixed now.

 

This post and all blog content Ⓒ Copyright Janet Farrar Worthington.

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Our Star-Mangled Banner

It’s pretty sad when you’re watching a sporting event and your first reaction is, “Oh, God, make it stop,” and the game hasn’t even started yet! Anybody watch the Rose Bowl? I don’t know who the singers were, don’t want to know, but I just kept thinking, if someone could actually sing the National Anthem in a non-tortured, non-butchered way that didn’t suck, that would be good.

You may be the greatest singer in the world, but I don’t want to hear your vocal acrobatics if you’re singing the National Anthem.

Just sing the song. Sing it straight.

My son, Josh, like most school kids in Maryland, took a field trip with his second grade class to Fort McHenry, the military base where Francis Scott Key was inspired to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I know it’s not easy to sing. Apparently, the melody was an old drinking song once. Not a real toe-tapper, not catchy, but it’s what we have. It deserves some respect.

”Amazing Grace,” similarly, has been repeatedly violated. This song, too, simple and beautiful, deserves more respect than it gets. But go to a funeral, and in the midst of your grief, you’re dealing with some singer’s big moment to interpret this perfect gem of a hymn. Once again, the focus is on the singer, on the interpretation, rather than on the message.

Don’t interpret it. Just sing the song.

I got sidetracked.

Anyway, Josh’s entire class learned all of the verses to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And they sang them right there at Fort McHenry, while we proud parents listened respectfully and took pictures. You know what? It was great. Because the focus was the song. They sang it straight.

It wasn’t about these kids, but about the place, and the actual rockets’ red glare that Francis Scott Key saw in 1814. On one very long night, while Key was being held captive on a British boat, on a diplomatic mission approved by President James Madison, he saw the huge American flag (sewn by Mary Pickersgill — the Flag House where she and some other ladies hand-sewed it in downtown Baltimore was on our school tour) flying triumphantly over the garrison at Fort McHenry, even though British warships were doing their best to bombard the crap out of the place. He was so inspired, he wrote the song. For better or worse, it’s ours.

It deserves to be sung straight. Please.

Isn’t there some singer out there who can just sing the damn song?

 

This post and all blog content Ⓒ Copyright Janet Farrar Worthington.

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