Offline

Today I am grateful for a visit from my sister Zita and our mom. Thanks for making the trip up and I enjoyed our time together!

I continue to keep in my thoughts and prayers those who are suffering Mother Nature's dark side this week with flooding, tornadoes, and the other problems that come with heavy rain and strong winds.

I am also grateful for lessons and reminders that life sends our way whether we are seeking them or not. I took an unexpected blog break for a couple of days because our Internet was down. Someone accidentally cut a fiber optic cable to create the initial issue. I was busy with other things too, like having visitors. When things weren't back up yesterday, I made a phone call to our provider. It was a good lesson in humility. I feel pretty tech un-savvy and it showed. I don't understand all of the factors involved here, or all the various wires and cords that plug in to various places. Couple that with a fear of really screwing something up and I get flustered easily.

A nice, patient woman in tech support talked me through unplugging the power and another cord, waiting 30 seconds, then plugging them back in. It worked. She was even apologetic that she hadn't mentioned earlier that when there is an outage, you want to cut power and reboot. Maybe everyone else knew that. Maybe I knew that in the recesses of my tech un-savvy mind. But I didn't think of it, and neither did my husband. No harm done. Lesson learned. I even wrote down the steps to take so we are prepared in the event of another outage.

I kind of enjoyed being offline and disconnected. It freed up some time and reminded me that I do spend a fair chunk of time online. I try to keep it productive, but sometimes get pulled into things I really don't need to spend time on. When connected, I need to be selective in what I give my energy. That is true of technology, but also life in general. Being disconnected is also of value, both technologically and in life overall. In fact, sometimes "going offline" for a while is the healthiest approach.

I am grateful for these reminders and grateful for an appreciation of both my online and offline pursuits.

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