Setting a Course

It’s warm and humid this morning with fog sitting on the far hills drifting down to touch the trees in the back pasture. No bird sounds to speak of, and the highway hum is low. It’s Sunday and this is the first morning of my effort to start my day without immediately looking at my phone upon waking and that includes my 3 a.m. wake up. It was not always thus. Previously, when I woke at night there was a book to read or time just to sit quietly in my chair, until sleep came again. No screen, no blue light.

But somewhere along the way in the last few years I’ve given in, been sucked entirely into the screen and the flickering digital world. Even now, as I type, I want to look. But I shan’t until I am finished, and the words published. One thing at a time. Life comes at me fast enough without me opening up the spigot of the smartphone, whose smartness was sold as a window into the world but whose real smartness is the ease with which it taps into our data so people can sell us stuff and that includes ideas.

But don’t take this as a Luddite like rap against technology because I like the ease of access to data, and entertainment, and how I can share my calendar and my location with my daughter so that she knows where I am. I’m very much in favor of the 21st century; I’d just like to slow the roll a bit. I’m aware people want to manipulate me and stepping back may give my filters time to operate, to sift the wheat from the chaff, to set a course I can explain with confidence. It may well be a lonely course of action, but it will be my course, and I will take full responsibility.