Today
is the first day in a long time that I don't have a pile of work
awaiting my attention. Mid-April always means a lighter workload for me,
and the timing couldn't be better. With milder temperatures, spring
fever sets in with a vengeance, and I'm itching to get outside and fix
up the deck, clean the porch, and tidy up the yard and gardens.On the schedule for this afternoon: buy potting soil and clean out my planters so I'll be ready to start shopping the local nurseries. Oh and it's only two more weeks until our outdoor farmers' market opens for the season. Good-bye vegetables from California, hello local produce!
Quiet time: A few years ago I edited a parenting book that inspired Mr. BFR and me to implement a change in our (childless) lives, and it's become a welcome habit. Almost every night after dinner we have a no-screen hour. During that time, we don't watch television and stay off our phones and computers. It's our time to do something fun (like play cards or work on a jigsaw puzzle) or listen to music, read (eBook screens are allowed), do crafts, enjoy a hobby, get a chore done, and so on. We don't always engage in a joint activity, and we don't set a timer. We've both been surprised at how often an hour of reading or playing the guitar (Mr. BFR) or lacemaking (me), turns into a whole evening without the television or social media. It's a great way to de-stress.
Still struggling (kind of):
On Twitter the other day I joined a conversation about reading digital
books. A couple of us agreed that making the switch was less about
reading on a screen instead of holding a book and more about getting
used to the other aspects: flagging quotes, marking data for use in
reviews, not having a clear visual of how much you've read and where the
end of the chapter is. The other big issue was remembering what's in
your digital library. When I go to pick my next book, I like looking at
the covers, maybe reading the first page or so, and seeing all my
choices in a row (or stack). I forget to look at my digital library. One
friend mentioned that she keeps a spreadsheet so she can see her
digital library. My problem is that I'm not usually near my computer
when I go to pick out my next book . . . perhaps I need to print out
monthly lists. I'm going to give it a try.
Instagram:
I used to share a daily photograph, and I loved looking at the world
through the eye of a camera lens. I've gotten away from that, mostly
because I live in a small town, walk the same four or five routes, and
work from home. I thought my photos were becoming repetitive and I was
losing my inspiration. I've recently decided that the pressure was all
in my head. Instead of making sure every photo was "artsy" why not just
share a moment from my life? I'm about a week into my new approach, and
I'm happy. I've been photographing my books, what I baked, what I saw in
the garden. I'm just going to go for it. If I get a lot of likes--yay
me. If I don't--oh well.Life changer: Huge shout out to SuziQoregon (Whimpulsive blog), for introducing me to ProtoPage, which I'm now using for my blog reader. I'm just setting it up and haven't added everybody yet, but I'm loving it! Here's what I did. First I either deleted or moved everything on the home screen that was already there (suggested by the app). Then I filled the front page with the blogs I read, editing the view to suit my needs. Now I can go to ProtoPage and see if anyone has published a new post and click through to read it. This works beautifully, and I'm so glad to be back to making the blog rounds. I'm slowly adding everyone's feeds to my ProtoPage home screen and love feeling connected again. BTW: it's a pretty cool site, and you can make tabs for different kinds of blogs or for adding Twitter feeds, news feeds, and even your Google calendar. Say thanks to SuziQoregon.
We watch very little television so enjoy a lot of no-screen time. It's amazing how much you can do when you're not chained to the TV.
ReplyDeleteI always say I'm going to take more pictures and, in the moment, I never remember to.
Great post! We used to enforce a "quiet time" with the girls were younger and have mostly kept the habit ourselves now that they're grown. I'm going to investigate ProtoPage... thanks for the tip!
ReplyDeleteLove this post. To share some of our quiet time with you I'll add that if we eat dinner on the patio and have wine, we stay outside and plug in colored lights after dark. We talk until it's near bedtime or the mosquitoes run us in. Otherwise we go into the den after dinner and listen to music and talk.
ReplyDeleteAstronomy plays a big part too - Doug gets one of his scopes out and I stay in and crochet or read for a bit. Sometimes I wander out to look. We watch a movie about once a week. It's relaxing.
Thanks for the tip about ProtoPage. Going t check it out.
Gosh I'll have to check out ProtoPage! Thanks for the background on it!
ReplyDeleteOh yay! I'm glad you tried ProtoPage - I just love it as my blog feed reader. For me having a page with the widgets for the blogs just seems to work better than the Feedly layout did.
ReplyDeleteYou've provoked so many thoughts!!
ReplyDeleteLove the quiet hour idea, but guess we tend to do that during the day as part of our routines. Being retired helps!!
Instagram - I try but just can't seem to get into it. Keep promising myself to do a photo a day but doesn't happen.
Love my e-reader and keep track of my books on Goodreads. Also have my TBR list there. 98% of my books are borrowed from the library and it also keeps a history lost of my borrows.
Still use Bloglovin' for blog reading. But only tend to go over there maybe once a week.
I like the quiet time idea, it seems like a great way to decompress.
ReplyDeleteI've been pretty happy with Bloglovin, but I'm curious about ProtoPage, so I'll have to check it out.
ReplyDeleteI hope you're having some good spring weather. I need to get outside and do some yardwork once we get back from our road trip.