The power went out, the Amish were involved, and for twelve hours, I forgot the internet existed. The outcome? My brain stopped screaming for the first time in a while.
A few months back, I was visiting my mom and there was a super windy storm that knocked out the power for about 12 hours. We had left the house to go get some sewing supplies from the Amish for a quilt my mom was making and came back around 1500 to the power being out.
This was, of course, during the time of year when it gets dark around 1630…a bit too early to go to bed. So we gathered up her oil lamps and lit them.
I made us dinner by the lamplight. We ate together by the lamplight. We played cards by lamplight…that was until we both got too cold and decided to call it a night and go to bed.
We had hours together without any electricity, but more importantly, without any digital distractions like TV or our phones (there is basically no cell service at her place, so without internet, there are no phones). Just the two of us, connecting as humans.
This was a rare disconnection from both electricity and internet and, I have to say, it was incredibly refreshing. I think we have all gotten so caught up in the constant barrage of digital noise that we have come to accept it as normal, when it’s really not.
I’m in the middle of listening to Pet Sematary (read/listening to it for like the umpteenth time), and there is dialogue between Louis and Jud as they are heading up to the burial grounds above the Pet Sematary that hits on how I feel about all the digital noise:
“It is that way once in a while. You don’t pick your times for feeling good, any more than you do for the other. And the pace has something to do with it too, but you don’t want to trust that. Heroin makes dope addicts feel good when they’re putting it in their arms, but all the time it’s poisoning them. Poisoning their bodies and poisoning their way of thinking. This place can be like that, Louis, and don’t you ever forget it.” - Jud Crandall (Pet Sematary)
So much of what we allow into our brains is poison. And for me, I find that my already overstimulated brain really struggles some days.
Part of it is the migraine brain, part of it is the AuDHD brain, and probably part of it is whatever nonsense the perimenopause monster is up to with my hormones.
But the biggest part is that I don’t always do the best job of following Jim Rohn’s advice of “Every day, stand guard at the door of your mind.”
While what I am writing here may seem confusing to some who only know of our work on training people to use AI tools, I need to be clear here: just because I use AI and we teach it to others (so they can have the skills needed to be competitive in this new AI World), that doesn’t mean I think tech needs to be in every single part of our day. We just aren’t meant for this much constant input.
It is part of our whole Digital Humanist approach. We are doubling down on AI, but at the same time, we are quadrupling down on the human skills.
So, I challenge you to:
Then, set up your sentry to stand guard at the door of your mind. Protect it fiercely. Be brutal with the criteria of the things you permit into the door.
And every so often, purposely schedule an entirely analog day.