{"id":207,"date":"2010-08-03T18:26:02","date_gmt":"2010-08-03T18:26:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/08\/03\/the-shallows\/"},"modified":"2010-08-03T18:26:02","modified_gmt":"2010-08-03T18:26:02","slug":"the-shallows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/the-shallows\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shallows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/span>It is August and the goldenrod is in bloom alongside the road.\u00a0 Last night, I lay in bed, windows opened wide, and listened to the thrum of crickets, a symphonic prelude to summer\u2019s end.\u00a0 I think back to all the things I was so sure I\u2019d do this summer, to the private to-do list I wrote for myself the first week of June, and realize that I\u2019ve made precious little progress on any of those projects.\u00a0 What have I been doing all this time?<\/p>\n

The fact that I\u2019ve 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\u2019t exactly fill me with\u00a0 a sense of accomplishment.\u00a0 And yet, I tell myself, I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, Jack and Steve and I visited my parents in Maine.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t do very much — the guys played tennis on a neighbor\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The three days we spent hanging around the house seemed long and leisurely and lovely.\u00a0 It occurred to me that, for the first time all summer, it really and truly actually felt<\/em> like summer.\u00a0 \u00a0 And then I realized why:\u00a0 my computer was sitting untouched in a straw bag in the bedroom.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sky.\u00a0 Water.\u00a0 Flowers. \u00a0 Family.\u00a0 Books.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I doodled, sketched, and even created a brand new, A to Z, pie-in-the-sky\u00a0 to-do list, including everything from \u201ctry writing an essay for the Oprah magazine\u201d to \u201cfind a birthday gift for John.\u201d \u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 The really surprising thing is that, without the ability to so much as check my e-mail, the vague anxiety I\u2019ve had for weeks, about not ever being caught up or on top of things, disappeared altogether.\u00a0 I read a bound galley I should have read weeks ago and wrote a quote for it (better late than never).\u00a0 I finally came up with an idea for a new video for the paperback of \u201cThe Gift of an Ordinary Day\u201d — another task that has had me stumped all summer.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t so much that I was actually getting anything \u201cdone,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Driving home on Sunday afternoon, we were quiet in the car.\u00a0 Jack stretched out in the back seat, reading \u201cSlaughterhouse Five,\u201d without his earbuds in.\u00a0 A rarity.\u00a0 Steve drove, without the radio on.\u00a0 I sat beside him, utterly absorbed in Nicholas Carr\u2019s \u201cThe Shallows:\u00a0 What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Talk about finding the right book at the right time.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I consider myself a thoughtful person — engaged with the world, focused on the things that matter, present in my own life.\u00a0 I earn my living by writing about being in the moment.\u00a0 And I do so by sitting in front of my laptop, typing words onto a screen.\u00a0 Nicholas Carr <\/a>is making me pause and reflect on what\u2019s really going on here.\u00a0 His research is unsettling, to say the least.<\/p>\n

I have a vivid memory of a specific turning point in the writing of my first book, \u201cMitten Strings for God,\u201d<\/a> twelve years ago.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The room was a mess.\u00a0 The pages were scrawled all over with arrows and deletions and pen marks in different colors for different levels of rewrites.\u00a0 And suddenly, casting my eyes over this chaos, I saw exactly how to put it all together.\u00a0 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<\/a>, I understand why.\u00a0 It\u2019s not simply that I have a different approach to writing now, although I do.\u00a0 It\u2019s that I have a different brain altogether.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (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.)<\/p>\n

The fact that \u201cThe Shallows\u201d<\/a> is not the blockbuster, break-out book of the summer is a surprise to me, for it has certainly rocked my world.\u00a0 It has shown me, irrefutably, what\u2019s 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,\u00a0 concentrate, and even — hard as this is to admit — my relationship with myself and the people I love the most.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The change was subtle at first.\u00a0 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. \u00a0There was room at the game tables.\u00a0 The place grew quieter.\u00a0 The books on the shelves were largely untouched.\u00a0 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:\u00a0 the couches were full of people, all gazing at their laptops.<\/p>\n

This year, I\u2019ve decided that my vacation will be a vacation from my computer as well.\u00a0 Steve, who read \u201cThe Shallows\u201d <\/a>first and then pressed it into my hands, is all for that.\u00a0 Although we\u2019re long past the stage where we can make such a call for our kids, \u00a0I\u2019m hoping that they\u2019ll at least consider taking a break from Facebook and YouTube.\u00a0 I\u2019m looking forward to a few games of Scrabble after dinner and to evenings that seem to stretch interminably toward bedtime.\u00a0 For myself, I already have a to-do list:\u00a0 Read deeply.\u00a0 Have long talks with my husband and my boys. Listen for loons.\u00a0 Write in my journal.\u00a0 Notice everything.\u00a0 Be amazed by the world.<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0 My wise and witty friend Karen Maezen Miller<\/a> has posted some very thoughtful related reflections about social media in \u201cDeath by Twitter,\u201d over at Smartly\u00a0<\/a>. \u00a0Have a look. \u00a0And then, let me know your thoughts: \u00a0As 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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is August and the goldenrod is in bloom alongside the road.\u00a0 Last night, I lay in bed, windows opened wide, and listened to the thrum of crickets, a symphonic prelude to summer\u2019s end.\u00a0 I think back to all the things I was so sure I\u2019d do this summer, to the private to-do list I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,27,40,8,10,14,15],"tags":[249,295,306,412,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-207","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-books-for-parents","9":"category-family-life","10":"category-mindfulness","11":"category-parenting","12":"category-parenting-teens","13":"category-soul-work","14":"category-writing-and-reading","15":"tag-karen-maezen-miller","16":"tag-mindfulness-2","17":"tag-nicholas-carr","18":"tag-technology","19":"tag-the-shallows","20":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}