I’ve previously written about the benefits of unplugging, and about how difficult I find doing it. No matter how much Allegra and Ruby remind me that there’s more to life than technology, whether it’s via walking across the keyboard or chasing each other around my monitor, or, as in the photo above, Ruby insisting that I get out of the way so she can watch some cat videos, I still find it very challenging to completely disconnect from all of my devices.
However, after spending last weekend at a friend’s lovely weekend home with no access to Wifi and only spotty cell phone reception, I realized just how good for the soul it is to spend time without electronics.
I was a little anxious about not being able to connect. I had set the stage by putting an “away” message on my main email account so people wouldn’t expect a response until Monday. It made me feel less compelled to respond, even tough I still checked my email once a day. I scheduled my blog posts and Facebook posts through the weekend and only monitored comments and responses once a day, rather than multiple times a day like I normally do. Even though I wasn’t completely unplugged, I still felt more relaxed than I had in a very long time.
I love being self-employed, and I happily pay the price for the freedom being my own boss brings, which is that you essentially never get a day off. I love what I do, so for me, work and non-work often blends together. But after this past weekend, I also realized that I need to step back from everything every once in a while, and if it takes going someplace where there’s no Wifi to do that, then I’ll have to do that more often.
My Wifi-free weekend nourished my soul in a way that it hadn’t been taken care of for quite some time. My friends’ house is surrounded by trees, with a view of a river. We had leisurely breakfasts at the house, we sat by the outdoor fireplace in the evening, we went to a couple of wonderful restaurants right on the water, and they took me out on their boat to view the gorgeous scenery in that part of the world from a different perspective. The entire weekend was a wonderful break from my routine.
The only drawback to my Wifi free weekend was that it was also a cat-free weekend, and I did miss Allegra and Ruby. As much as I would have loved to prolong the experience of being so relaxed, I was happy to come home to them (and I think they were happy to have me back.) But I am determined to find ways to create more of that particular feeling of peace in my every day life, even when Wifi is available. I’ll let you know how it goes.
How about you? Do you find it difficult to unplug?
The post Conscious Cat Sunday: A Weekend Without Wifi appeared first on The Conscious Cat.
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