“Saturday, Donny, is Shabbos, the Jewish day of rest. That means that I don’t work, I don’t drive a car, I don’t fucking ride in a car, I don’t handle money, I don’t turn on the oven, and I sure as shit don’t fucking roll!” – Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski
So I think Walter has something here. I heard about the National Day of Unplugging over at the Minimalist Mom. I have read some posts on minimalist blogs before about unplugging for the weekend, a week (!!!) or even longer. Her post, however, titled “It’s Just 24 Hours,” made one day seem doable.
It immediately reminded me of Walter’s Shabbos rant from The Big Lebowski (seriously the best movie ever… at least the first 70 minutes). And if Walter Sobchak is down, I’m down. But it took a few days to convince myself I could do it. That I WOULD do it.
I’m not just semi-addicted to email, texting and facebook. I have an online business that requires a decent amount of attention. So… unplugging for a week isn’t really going to work out for me. But sundown Friday to sundown Saturday could. So I’m going to do it. I wrote “try it” first, but you know how it goes: Do or do not. There is no try. Damn I’m full of awesome movie quotes today, yeah?
My rules will be: no computer, no iPhone, no TV. I probably will use the oven and my kindle – but ONLY to read my book (Anathem right now, a recommendation from husband and IT IS AWESOMEO). And the record player. If baby needs to nurse in the middle of the night, no surfing on my phone. Just me and him in the darkness, which frankly sounds lovely.
I’ll update after the event! There is no try!
the minimalist year 