October 26, 2025

I woke up when my husband's alarm went off this morning at 6 a.m. It's Sunday, but it's hunting season so he likes to get it in anytime he can. We spent all day yesterday with friends celebrating the twin's thirteenth birthdays. There is so much that I wish to say about it but I can't land on one place. 

Sometimes it seems my life is a whirlwind. I feel overwhelmed at times with people, places, and tasks. I chose this life, I chose the chaos. I couldn't have chosen all of it, because life happens, things beyond our control take root and they just are, but mostly, our lives become consequences of choices we make. Consequence may not be the right word in every instance. Josh and I chose to have three children and got a bonus child. Happy actions lead to happy consequences. 

I believe that's the magic in it all. The "not knowing," the wonder, the anticipation. We live in a world where we know too much, where we are just a simple click away from knowing everything. I mean, I like knowing things. I like learning things. I'm a teacher for gosh sakes! Learning has made me who I am. It has blown open doors that would have otherwise been locked closed. Education is power. 

But I woke up two hours ago and I've done nothing but scroll through endlessness before my feet hit the floor, before my eyes saw the sun, they were gazing into blue, man-made light, as I learned useless AI-manufactured nothingness. I didn't learn anything, I might remember one of the things I saved, but was it worth losing two hours of daylight over? 

I could have been writing or reading or stretching or discovering a cure for cancer. I could have folded the laundry I dumped at the foot of my bed in a mad dash to "save" it, when my toilet overflowed yesterday morning. Life is real and messy and worth experiencing every single moment. From reconnecting with the love of your life in a pizza place to the painful birth of our last babies thirteen years ago. Every moment woven into our tapestry, every memory, every laugh, every tear, everything worth more than an endless scroll-sesh on Instagram.

It has become this habit that I fall asleep to, waking up with the phone, unplugged in my bed, my glasses still on my face. At 6 a.m. there was such promise for productivity and now, I feel like how I feel most days, behind, this terrible feeling of not being able to catch up following me as I go about my day. There's nothing magical about that. It's just anxiety, riddled through, from sunrise to sunset.

You should see the stack of unread books on my nightstand. I bought, An Outlaw and a Lady, last summer and I'm dying to read Waylon Jennings's love story and haven't gotten to it. My own novel sits unfinished in my laptop, and I'm so close! I've written the end, just need to connect all the dots and it sits there, waiting on me to finish procrastinating while I mindlessly piddle on the internet. It's infuriating to have accomplished so much and be cut off at the knees by a useless inanimate object that does nothing but stress me out. I have done so many things that I never thought I could do and my phone is what is keeping me from completing my life list?? Seriously??

We get one life, y'all. One. I want to say that I'll cut it out completely this week, but can I actually do that? I'll have to buy an alarm clock...I do crazy stuff all the time. I could probably do this. (she's debating, doing a mini pro/con list in her mind) Yes, I think I can go smartphone-less this week. Let's do it. 

No internet phone-ness for an entire week. I'll let you know how it goes.