press pause

I've been noticing more and more how easily I get distracted by the internet. I can so easily whittle away a half hour or more just browsing blogs, following link after link, stumbling across treasures and pearls of wisdom along the way. It's a great way to connect with like-minded people and find inspiration for things as diverse as poetry and paella (and discover that maybe they're not so different after all). But the thing is that the more time I spend on the internet the less attention I pay to my own life and my own voice. It's not that I spend all day on the world wide web. If I added up my total time each day it would probably be less than an hour. But I've developed a habit of stopping suddenly in the middle of doing something to pop over and see what's going on in there. As if it won't still be there when I am finished what I am doing.

So, inspired by Fiona Robyn's week long internet fast I decided to make Sunday a 'day of internet rest'; a sort of search-engine-sabbatical - a day to press pause and find some space before the week got off to another busy start.

I started the day with a walk in the fresh autumn air and came home to pancakes for breakfast.
After a productive morning of catching up on housework and bit of gardening, I put my feet up and read my book on the couch. The girls were playing happily outside and Glenn was busy in the shed.
Before long my eyelids were drooping and I had nodded off! An hour later I emerged planning to concoct a vegetable quiche for dinner but Glenn suggested we get Chinese takeaways. After dinner of fried rice and spring rolls I whipped up a batch of chocolate brownies for lunchbox treats and then sat down to watch the TV2 Sunday night movie - Fool's Gold, while completing two more squares of my blanket.

All in all, it was a very restful Sunday, just like Sundays were made to be. I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready for the week. And it was great to find that when I logged on today the internet hadn't come crashing down in my absence and all my favourite blogs had been updated with fresh and interesting posts!
It felt so good that I'm planning on making every Sunday my day of Internet Interrupt.

Hope you all had a great weekend!