It is August and the goldenrod is in bloom alongside the road. Last night, I lay in bed, windows opened wide, and listened to the thrum of crickets, a symphonic prelude to summer’s end. I think back to all the things I was so sure I’d do this summer, to the private to-do list I wrote for myself the first week of June, and realize that I’ve made precious little progress on any of those projects. What have I been doing all this time?
The fact that I’ve managed to write a weekly blog entry, answer most of my e-mail, read and sometimes comment on the blogs of a few friends and fellow writers, and stay current with my pals on Facebook doesn’t exactly fill me with a sense of accomplishment. And yet, I tell myself, I’ve been busy–many days, really, really busy–just trying to keep up with the flow of news and information and communication that shows up on my computer screen each morning.
Over the weekend, Jack and Steve and I visited my parents in Maine. Cell phone reception is spotty and there is no internet out on the spit of land where their house nestles on ledge, surrounded by water on three sides. We didn’t do very much — the guys played tennis on a neighbor’s court, we went to the Farmers Market and to the Pancake Breakfast at the library, took walks, read books, cooked and ate and cleaned up. The three days we spent hanging around the house seemed long and leisurely and lovely. It occurred to me that, for the first time all summer, it really and truly actually felt like summer. And then I realized why: my computer was sitting untouched in a straw bag in the bedroom. Freed from its siren call, unable to click, tweet, type, or browse, I was forced to give my complete, undistracted attention to the physical world before my eyes and at my fingertips. Sky. Water. Flowers. Family. Books. A pad of paper and a pen. It felt strange, and sort of wonderful to curl up on the couch and write by hand, in different colors of ink, on big sheets of blank paper. I doodled, sketched, and even created a brand new, A to Z, pie-in-the-sky to-do list, including everything from “try writing an essay for the Oprah magazine” to “find a birthday gift for John.” Instead of making me anxious, the process was strangely calming, as if in committing all these random thoughts and ideas to paper I was already moving a step closer toward realizing some of them.
What happened to us this weekend in Maine seemed almost profound — time expanded. Each moment felt fat and full and rich. Meanwhile, something deep inside me relaxed and let go. The really surprising thing is that, without the ability to so much as check my e-mail, the vague anxiety I’ve had for weeks, about not ever being caught up or on top of things, disappeared altogether. I read a bound galley I should have read weeks ago and wrote a quote for it (better late than never). I finally came up with an idea for a new video for the paperback of “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” — another task that has had me stumped all summer. It wasn’t so much that I was actually getting anything “done,” but rather that I could feel myself coming back in touch at last with that small, capricious part of me that observes and imagines and creates from the inside out.
Driving home on Sunday afternoon, we were quiet in the car. Jack stretched out in the back seat, reading “Slaughterhouse Five,” without his earbuds in. A rarity. Steve drove, without the radio on. I sat beside him, utterly absorbed in Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.”
Talk about finding the right book at the right time. If you are sitting in front of your own computer at this moment, reading this blog entry, my guess is that you will be as provoked and disturbed and challenged by this extraordinary book as I am. I consider myself a thoughtful person — engaged with the world, focused on the things that matter, present in my own life. I earn my living by writing about being in the moment. And I do so by sitting in front of my laptop, typing words onto a screen. Nicholas Carr is making me pause and reflect on what’s really going on here. His research is unsettling, to say the least.
I have a vivid memory of a specific turning point in the writing of my first book, “Mitten Strings for God,” twelve years ago. I sat on the floor, surrounded by drafts, stacks and stacks of paper that I had written by hand, typed onto the computer, printed out, and then cut up with scissors and taped together. The room was a mess. The pages were scrawled all over with arrows and deletions and pen marks in different colors for different levels of rewrites. And suddenly, casting my eyes over this chaos, I saw exactly how to put it all together. It seems like a lifetime ago, an ah-ha experience that I will never repeat no matter how many more books I write. Now, thanks to Nicholas Carr, I understand why. It’s not simply that I have a different approach to writing now, although I do. It’s that I have a different brain altogether. A brain that has been radically changed and shaped by the way I use it day in and day out, interacting with the very machine upon which I type these words. (It has been years since I wrote longhand, and then typed my work onto the computer. And if you think that small cognitive shift is meaningless, think again.)
The fact that “The Shallows” is not the blockbuster, break-out book of the summer is a surprise to me, for it has certainly rocked my world. It has shown me, irrefutably, what’s at stake as I go about my own daily online business, how the ingrained habits of my wired life have already changed the way I think, the way I see and interact with the world, my ability to reflect, read deeply, concentrate, and even — hard as this is to admit — my relationship with myself and the people I love the most.
Week after next, Henry will be done with his summer job, Jack will take a break from his apprenticeship in Boston, and the four of us will spend a week together, as we always do, on a lake in Maine. A couple of years ago, bowing to pressure from the guests, the owner of the rustic old camp we return to year after year installed wi-fi in the main lodge. The change was subtle at first. Fewer people played Scrabble after dinner. The teenagers seemed to lose interest in flirting with one another over the perennially unfinished jigsaw puzzles, and began chatting with friends back home instead. There was room at the game tables. The place grew quieter. The books on the shelves were largely untouched. The guy who was always looking for a game of Bridge never even got out his deck of cards. Last year, we looked around one night and laughed: the couches were full of people, all gazing at their laptops.
This year, I’ve decided that my vacation will be a vacation from my computer as well. Steve, who read “The Shallows” first and then pressed it into my hands, is all for that. Although we’re long past the stage where we can make such a call for our kids, I’m hoping that they’ll at least consider taking a break from Facebook and YouTube. I’m looking forward to a few games of Scrabble after dinner and to evenings that seem to stretch interminably toward bedtime. For myself, I already have a to-do list: Read deeply. Have long talks with my husband and my boys. Listen for loons. Write in my journal. Notice everything. Be amazed by the world.
P.S. My wise and witty friend Karen Maezen Miller has posted some very thoughtful related reflections about social media in “Death by Twitter,” over at Smartly . Have a look. And then, let me know your thoughts: As we grow ever more accustomed to and dependent on our technology, what to we trade away in return for speed and ease and efficiency? What have we already lost?
Katrina, thank you for your continued inspiration! You have the wonderful knack of knowing just how I’m feeling! Reading your wisdom guides me back on my path when needed or confirms that I’m right where I need to be 🙂 As I pack up my husband, two small boys and golden retriever and head to a small island off the coast of Maine, I will think of you after we complete our first game of Scrabble 🙂
We’re off to a friend’s house in north of the NH notches next weekend in a rural neighborhood on the end of an old logging village, accessing the street by a swinging footbridge over a stream far beneath. Our friend (the owner) wanted to tell me about the cable and turning on the WiFi. We stopped her in her tracks! A "getaway" means a a "getaway"!!!
Katrina, this is one of my favorite, most thought-provoking pieces that you’ve done. I heard about Carr’s book a few weeks back, and am happy to read your review of it here. It sounds like a must-read. Peggy Orenstein did a great essay in this Sunday’s NY Times Magazine called "I Tweet, Therefore I Am." In it, she talks about how social media has turned us from internally focused to externally focused, a performance-based society that is (sadly) losing our ability to reflect. I’ll paste a link here, in case you missed it and are interested:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01wwln-lede-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=i%20tweet%20therefore%20i%20am&st=cse
When I was in graduate school I had a professor, who had to be pushing 80, who was a prolific author in the field of career psychology. I loved going into his office when he was working on a book or journal article and seeing how he had cut and paste his words into a jigsaw puzzle of sorts. It was so old-fashioned and charming, but it worked for him. And I can see now that there was value in his process: sometimes it pays to work at a slower pace.
Right now I’m staring at a VERY long to-do list I have to accomplish in the next four weeks before my baby is born. But you’ve inspired me to take a step away from it and maybe create a new one that is more imaginative; not simply a list of tasks and chores, but one filled with ideas and dreams.
Your yearly pilgrimage to the cabin in Maine was one of my favorite parts of your book (I’ve been begging my husband ever since to find me one of my own). It’s sad to hear that technology has encroached, but I hope you can do your best to resist the pull and have a marvelous, restful week!
This is timely as usual…I pledged this to myself when i went to truro recently. my goal was to be phone, FB, and email free for 3 days. I didn’t quite make it with the phone, as I needed it to coordinate dinner plans twice. i did have to drive a mile and half to get a signal so it made me think a lot about it. I was on FB only once for 5 mins-so pretty good on that count, and no email checking-score!
you are right about places like that in maine-i know of what you speak! very interesting observation.
so count me in for a scrabble game!
-JG
Have not read The Shallows, but you are the second person I respect highly to recommend it … I’m scared to read it, scared of the reckoning it will surely inspire. Thank you for prodding me in that direction. We all need it.
xo
Although I always enjoy reading your posts, I spend relatively little time (and diminishing) at my laptop lately. Still, I appreciate the actual discussions and authentic expression of feelings and ideas that are shared in this world… while avoiding Twitter, etc. I like Karen’s points as well, and particularly the manic search for followers that aren’t really there anyway, etc. While I don’t think there’s much point to trying to change the zeitgeist, I do think that being conscious and not just conforming to it means really thinking about what we’re doing and why. I’m tempted to read "The Shallows," but I’m also really enjoying Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller (and not even on an eReader) at present, and their words seem as relevant today as ever.
All this social media also makes me think of Talking Heads circa early 80s: "You’re talking a lot but you’re not saying anything."
Just as everything looks like a nail if all you have is a hammer, perhaps every virtual window starts to look like a chance to be seen if we fear that we are inadequate or maybe not even really existing. Conversely, perhaps the meta-message for some of us is that there are authentic and intelligent others out there and we can connect without depleting each other or ourselves.
Here’s to more time with nature and live humans, and less time at our screens (and to the sensible enjoyment of our virtual world when we’re in it).
I’m kind of with Lindsey on the idea of reading the book. I love non-fiction and I know I’d love that book, but I’m very afraid of what it would force me to see in myself. Don’t worry though. You know I’ll cave in and check it out the next time I’m at work and it crosses the circulation desk in front of me. 🙂
As for being tuned in but tuned out, I generally agree. I have always written better through typing. My long hand could never keep up with my thoughts. I entered a new dimension of life when I discovered computer word processing in college. Suddenly my words could match the speed of my ideas!
I got very spoiled to being able to write and write quickly. Then the internet came along. I soaked in great joy from being able to ‘chat’ with long distance friends when the toddlers whot filled up my house made me forget I was a grown up. It again opened up my world.
Then came facebook, in very recent years. I am very tight with my friends list. I only keep a list of those whom I truly know and love hearing about. This includes a lot of extended family in many other states. I love reading their updates, knowing that my nephews in Georgia are headed to the pool and my sister in law in NH is going on vacation next week.
But it is all SO distracting. I find myself laying in bed at night, making the ‘new’ to do list for the next day….less trolling around on internet stuff, more actual writing. Less clicking just one more time to check my email and more making memories with my kids, outside of my office.
Maybe it’s time to read that book after all. I love the way the internet keeps me connected to people I love who live far away. I just need to find a balance so it doesn’t make me neglect the people I love who live in my own house.
Great post. And I’m excited to hear your idea about the video for the paperback of Ordinary Day.
Judy
justonefoot.blogspot.com
Thank you for this! I’ve been contemplating my computer time for awhile, and now I have checked out Carr’s book from the library. Your blog is one of the highlights of my computer time. Balancing it all, is the key. Thanks for the reminder.
Katrina,
After reading your post, I wanted to bring attention to another great book out this summer on this topic – Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, written by William Powers.
http://www.williampowers.com/
He and his wife, author Martha Sherrill, are doing a tour of small bookstores in New England, and will be in Keene, NH on August 10th.
Most of all, Katrina, I want thank you for your writing. I found your book, Mitten Strings for God, when my girls were both under 5, and I loved it. Your style, thoughts and grace all resonated deeply. It became one of my favorite “mom books,” all of which had been neglected for a few years when we moved from the west coast to the east and never quite unpacked all our boxes – busy with a new business, our girls & new baby. Last spring, when I was forwarded a YouTube video from a friend, I was struck by the tone of the person speaking – it was so familiar. And then I discovered why – it was you, and your voice was already in my head from reading and re-reading your book over the years. Amazingly, the digital world allowed me to quickly make the connections. And so once again, I am delighted to be hearing your voice by reading your blog. Once again, you are gifting me with insight and perspective, helping me define and appreciate my journey as a mother. Thank you!
This makes perfect sense to me! We need to step away (temporarily ban ourselves) from all the mechanical trappings of modernity from time to time and enjoy our own raw forms of getting away and connecting with fleshier realities. I just finished reading "Connect" by Edward Hallowell (1999) and it is worth reading if you have not read it. It’s right to the point. Thanks for the read.
I have not yet read this book but I did recently read: The Tyranny of E-mail. Similar premise, I believe… will be trying out the Shallows.
I wish I had been there, with you.