It’s been over a month since I announced my latest electronic detox on this blog, so an update is very overdue.
As before, it did not take very long for me to realize that my goals were too ambitious. While there was not a panicked flight back to my iPhone, my flip-phone adventure only lasted a couple of days. The main driver this time was my podcasts. I found that I missed having my own audio in the car. While there are alternate methods to get podcasts into the car, they all involve increased complexity and run counter to my goals.
What I did instead was to limit my iPhone. I removed every app I don’t regularly use, and I made sure all social media went with it. Twitter was the hardest, but after a few days I didn’t miss it.
Eventually I installed Instagram again. I realized that the people I enjoy the most from Twitter are all my photographer friends. I can follow their work and interact with them on IG. I find it much more manageable and less time intensive than Twitter ever was.
So I consider the experiment a success, even though my iPhone is back on my person. I’ve re-evaluated how I use it and brought a measure of control back to my life.
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And then there was the pine tree.
Two and a half weeks ago, after the big storms had passed, on a randomly windy night, we were jarred from bed at 23:07 by a tremendous crash. My initial thought was that one of the neighbors’ houses had exploded.
Approximately 40 feet of tree broke off the top of one of our pines. It struck the corner of the house above Beth’s head and broke apart. One piece passed over the peak of the roof, destroying the side steps and part of the screen porch. The rest scraped down the side of the house, poked a hole in the back steps, and flattened one end of the garden railway. Along the way some part of it put three holes in the roof.
We are still cleaning up the mess, but I’ll have campfire wood for years. I shall immolate its corpse for my pleasure.
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I think there were other things I needed to write about, but that’s all I can remember at this moment. The intervening weeks have been busy. It’s almost 22:00 and I have to work in the morning. More later.
Notes from Mosquito Hill 