I must confess that I’ve become addicted to electronics. I’m on my computer every day for several hours, longer when I’m writing and editing. Additionally, I’m on my phone more than I should be. It’s really nice for keeping in touch with friends and family, but spending hours on it is not a good thing.
I printed out my latest manuscript a month ago and was manually editing it. It’s a writer/editor thing. It’s easier to find mistakes, holes in the story, and typos on paper than on the computer screen. Several times, I flipped back to see what I’d done somewhere else and tweak it so the two places matched, which is much easier to do on paper than scrolling on a computer screen. My progress was slow on the manuscript, doing a chapter or two nearly every day. I wanted to go faster but was too sidetracked by other things to keep at it.
The subdivision we live in was built in the 1970s so some of the utilities and other things are aging fast. For the past two months, crews have been in the neighborhood putting in new cable TV and internet cables/wires. To hook up the new stuff, they had to turn off the electricity to the neighborhood for most of a day. Having been forewarned, I made sure my phone was fully charged.
The day the electricity was off, I didn’t spend much time on the phone so I could preserve the charge. I spent no time on the computer, of course. I spent almost all day editing my manuscript. By the time the electricity was flipped back on, I’d done over a hundred pages of quality edits. The sense of accomplishment was huge!
Another good part of not having electricity was eating out for lunch. We found a great new barbeque place that we might not have tried otherwise.
Since that day, I completed the edits on the manuscript and am now inserting them into the document. That may seem the long way of getting it done, but the results are much better when editing on paper. When I put them in, I may change the way my edits indicated to something better. It’s the author’s prerogative.
I also have not been on my phone as much. I read a book instead of perusing Facebook. It feels good, and I intend to do it more often. I have a wall full of books that need read.
Not having electricity for a day shed light on what I should be doing. Sometimes you don’t know when you’ve developed a bad habit so you don’t realize how much you need to break it. The day we had no electricity reminded me to unplug more often and get more done.
That you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, as we commanded you… I Thessalonians 4:11