It worked. Shutting out the world, shutting out the bullshit and the shouting, the suffering and the protesting, the crazyness and the crazy talk, worked. Even when I had to log onto social media, to post my column and promote an upcoming event, I simply ignored what would stress me out.
I also slept through each night this week since there was no "screen time" after seven p.m. What, no three o'clock wake up to worry? All because I turned a phone off?
There is something to be said for self-care and "sunny ways". It's not that I don't want to be informed and engaged, it's not that I think we can live our lives without every experiencing anxiety or conflict or even violence; it's that there is nothing selfish or naive about taking a break to focus on your own work.
By setting the world aside -- and it did keep spinning crookedly on its axis, didn't it, without totally spinning off it (yet) -- I accomplished the work I needed to get done. Three essays for the book proposal for the new collection!
Even better, by not filling my brain with stuff that really has nothing to do with my life or my work, I kept my channels of creativity clean and open. The ideas are thrilled to be bouncing around my brain, out of hiding, safe and free from the nasty shrapnel that had been flying around in there last week.
I look at it this way: The world is going to need my feel-good essays in the near future, when the shit show takes its act on the road, and the only way to escape it is to lose ourselves in books.
There is something to be said for self-care and "sunny ways". It's not that I don't want to be informed and engaged, it's not that I think we can live our lives without every experiencing anxiety or conflict or even violence; it's that there is nothing selfish or naive about taking a break to focus on your own work.
By setting the world aside -- and it did keep spinning crookedly on its axis, didn't it, without totally spinning off it (yet) -- I accomplished the work I needed to get done. Three essays for the book proposal for the new collection!
Even better, by not filling my brain with stuff that really has nothing to do with my life or my work, I kept my channels of creativity clean and open. The ideas are thrilled to be bouncing around my brain, out of hiding, safe and free from the nasty shrapnel that had been flying around in there last week.
I look at it this way: The world is going to need my feel-good essays in the near future, when the shit show takes its act on the road, and the only way to escape it is to lose ourselves in books.
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