A Day, Week, Month Without?
The book I’m reading on ADHD makes me wonder if I could go a day without my phone/computer/watch given how our brains are wired by the routines and actions we practice. And yet, the more we flit around from one thing to another, constantly distracting ourselves, the more unsettled we become. We shouldn’t need a book to tell us this. We can feel it.
Could I go a day? A week? A month without any of it? OK, maybe keep the phone on and in the house, but treat it like the ones that hung on the walls of our kitchens when we were growing up. Tell people to call, and promise to both pick-up when it rings as well as call back when people leave messages, like we used to. “Mom, the phone’s for you. It’s Dad.”
If I decide to do this for more than a day, would I have to tell friends and family who might be trying to reach me by text, or email, or but any number of other social media options?
The book, ADHD 2.0, talks about the importance of focusing on one task at a time. The more we do this, the more we accomplish. Not rocket science, and yet here I am jumping around checking Facebook, then the weather and my activity rings. Really!?! And while I do sit down every morning to read and write for a few hours, the rest of the day’s like walking through an amusement park. “Mom, can I ride the roller coaster again… please?”
The other day, I put pen to paper quite literally, afraid to open my computer for fear of seeing the final score of USA Sweden before I had a chance to watch the replay. This act of physically writing down my thoughts was refreshing given the book’s descriptions of people who suffer from attention disorder, and maybe we all have it to some degree. But for most, we can regulate ourselves, which in turn staves off the gloom and doom associated with a racing mind unable to focus. Most of us tend to be better at putting on the brakes, which keeps us from getting anxious.
If I do choose to take a day off, let it be in a place where nature abounds. Again, pretty obvious to want to be surrounded and comforted by sights and sounds that calm and sooth the soul and nurture the spirit. Just yesterday, Mary and I went for a walk in the woods of Maine and found it as beautiful as the hikes we’d recently experienced among the Redwoods of California. Walking in the pouring rain of an unusually wet Maine summer day, an abundance of ferns and moss painted everything in soft, peaceful light. This kind of quiet something you don’t find back home in Boston.
I don’t know if I could go more than a day, could you? Maybe we should start a Facebook Page to compare notes.
