Making a change

I woke up to snow today. It’s unusual for where I live, maybe once a winter we get snow that sticks. As the day has gone on the snow is falling heavier and sticking even more. I’ve welcomed the quiet, white world outside.

A barn sits in the middle ground, snow falling in front of it, the wood is weathered and worn and there are spots of unevenness with holes to the interior. The second floor is open and you can see inside, a glimpse of hay. To the left of the barn is a tee, snow clinging to it and covering all its branches.
From my walk in the snow, usually this is where I stop and chat with Meow Meow the cat, but today he was nowhere to be found. All was quiet as the snow fell.

I’ve not done well the past two weeks. Last night I realized, with the help of G, that I need to make some serious changes and today I woke up determined to do just that. A huge part of it will be not picking up my phone, it’s too easy to get lost in the shuffle of the internet on that small thing. The other part, which I started this weekend is getting back to journaling most days, to get out whatever is in my head and let it go. The final bit was deleting my last social media account, Instagram. I hadn’t posted there in almost a year and it wasn’t a place that was creating community for me.

There is so much I can’t control and spending time reading about it is not helpful. I’ve realized that community, for me, doesn’t come from online interactions but from knowing people in real life. The most satisfying social media experiences I’ve had have been with folks that I already knew in some fashion and then continued to keep up that relationship online in a private capacity. That’s long gone for me due to the changing nature of platforms and I’m finally letting go of expecting to recreate it.

In general, the goal for February is to be online less, a lot less. It’s to use my laptop for whatever it is I need to do and leave my phone sitting on the sill in my office. I’m reading more paper books, either used from our local shop or the library. I’m watching movies and shows that are older or from another country. The Criterion Channel has been good for that, as has been PBS. Sidenote: I just finished season four of Astrid on PBS and I can’t recommend that show highly enough if you like mysteries. I may also be posting more notes here, we’ll see, but already journaling is leading me to want to write more and share some of it.