{"id":6549,"date":"2017-07-16T21:24:47","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T01:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/?p=6549"},"modified":"2017-07-16T21:24:47","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T01:24:47","slug":"taking-vacation-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/notstrictlyspiritual.com\/life-lines\/taking-vacation-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking a vacation from technology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this week when a headline made me pause\u2014and click: \u201cI almost let my journalism job destroy my marriage. Don\u2019t make the same mistake,\u201d it read. Although I\u2019m no longer a journalist and I don\u2019t think my marriage is on the verge of destruction due to my job, I do think my joy, my spiritual health and my life in general are teetering close to the brink because of the always-connected mentality of the modern world. And I know I\u2019m not alone.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poynter.org\/2017\/i-almost-let-my-journalism-job-destroy-my-marriage-dont-make-the-same-mistake-update\/464416\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">story on the Poynter website<\/a>, one man makes this-not-so-startling discovery:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cYou asked us to write down everything we did from the time we reached the parking lot until we left for home,\u201d the editor said. \u201cBut by the time I got to the parking lot, I\u2019d already been working for two hours.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy day starts when I wake up and check my email.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He\u2019s right, of course. Employees in news organizations (and, to be sure, many other businesses) frequently start working hours before they leave home. They also work while traveling to and from the office and they work some more after they return home, sometimes for hours.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although work is the main culprit here, it\u2019s not the only problem. At night, after the dinner dishes are cleared, I\u2019m usually working on my laptop, Dennis is reading on his iPad, and each child is on a device, usually working on homework in the school season or, during these summer months, Snapchatting with friends, prepping for college visits or keeping up with the day\u2019s news. For myself, the full-time tether to work borders on obsession. It is the first thought in my head when I wake up, even if it happens to be 3 a.m. It is the last thing I think about before I drift off to sleep, and, when I try to meditate, my work To Do list ends up becoming my mantra.<\/p>\n<p>Some of it is the nature of the job, but most of it is the nature of me \u2014 combined with the nature of the world we live in. Bad combo. Gone are the days when you put a file in your desk drawer, turned out the office light and put your work to bed for the day. Now your files are in the Cloud, your office is in your hand, and, rather than turn out the light, you simply switch to \u201cNight Mode\u201d to give your poor eyes some relief as you read work emails in bed.<\/p>\n<p>With increasing regularity, I suggest to Dennis that we sell everything and move off the grid, although since I have never been a camper, this is probably not a good model if survival is my goal. But there is a grain of truth in that statement. It seems the only way to disconnect anymore is to do it dramatically, in a wholesale way that means leaving society as we know it, and there\u2019s something wrong with that. We have to regain our collective balance when it comes to the technology that makes life easier, and often more fun, and the technology that makes us a prisoner in our own lives.<\/p>\n<p>Toward the end of the Poynter story, the author poses this question and answer:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPractically speaking, how can I decide when it\u2019s time to stop working and call it a day?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor starters, don\u2019t wait until everything is finished\u2014because it\u2019s never finished. Right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What are you trying to finish right now? Has your phone become your significant other? How can you break the cycle? Summer is the time to find out. You don\u2019t have to go off the grid for good, but what about for a week or even one day?<\/p>\n<p>Try tying your technology fast to the Sabbath, and make every Sunday a technology-free day. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t take a call from a child needing a ride home from a friend\u2019s house, just that you\u2019re not going to get sucked into the work email vortex when you end the call. Step away from your device and give yourself a rest. The life you save may be your own.<\/p>\n<p><em>This column originally appeared in the July 6, 2017, issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cny.org\/stories\/taking-a-vacation-from-technology,15793?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Catholic New York<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was scrolling through my Facebook feed this week when a headline made me pause\u2014and click: \u201cI almost let my journalism job destroy my marriage. Don\u2019t make the same mistake,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[574,521,101,522],"class_list":["post-6549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-lines","tag-balance","tag-disconnect","tag-life-lines","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Taking a vacation from technology<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Step away from your phone and regain some balance.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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