Disconnected

I love technology, but I am easily overwhelmed.

My goal is to make my living through blogging, but I am an extremely private, shy and quiet person.

I am not available at all times. I use a four-year-old “dumb” phone, and it’s always on silent. I’ve been eligible for the discounted upgrade for more than two years, but the phone I use works just fine.

I take a lot of photos, but I rarely edit them. I point, shoot and post. In a world where everything is fake, the journalist in me wants something real.

Josh and I have not had cable or satellite TV since 2006. We use Netflix and iTunes and Hulu for everything we want to watch. We choose what we want to see and when we want to see it.

We read.

My mom worried that without TV I might miss out on something. I might be too disconnected (never mind that I worked for a newspaper at the time).

Instead I’m more alert. More conscious. More sensitive. Now that I’m “disconnected,” I notice violence, sexism, extra noise.

I try not to absorb what I’m fed.

A group of friends and I gathered at Applebees to watch the Republican presidential debates recently. Everyone else in the bar was watching an NFL game.

I enjoy sports, but something is off.

I read a Facebook post awhile back where the person said she would rather die of her own cancer returning than listen to a Republican.

I also avoid siding with “the right” (or the left), but that’s a lot of people to hate.

There’s an awful lot of fear and blame out there, mostly fear.

One of the most caring people in the world asks me several times per year: “You don’t walk any of those pitbull dogs, do you?”

She asks because she loves me.

This relative of mine fears “pitbulls,” yet she’s not sure what a “pitbull” looks like. She is not a dog person.

For the record, I walk several pit-type dogs. Sometimes two or three at a time.

A friend told me she walked through a park one morning for the first time in months. She commented on how she saw a butterfly and a garden and how it all seemed poetic.

I realize most people are like my friend and might take a walk in a park once or twice per season, and that’s it for the entire year.

I walk through several parks every day, during all seasons.

Early November is when I see geese gathering and leaving, bits of color lingering in trees, my dog’s breath in the morning air. It’s when I see frost coating the grass and the dogs are in top hunting mode, always searching for squirrels or rabbits, migrating birds.

When I’m out running the dogs, I recall all the things that represent November to me – an end to swimming practices and rugby games, a dusting of snow in Minnesota state parks, drinking a beer out back, clinging to the edge of the sun.