So, having looked closely at the ways I spend my time online, I have been broadening out the idea of simplicity by looking at areas like my TV watching. It's very easy for me to veg out in front of the TV; it's in a direct line of sight from my wheelchair. Although I can still walk a little indoors, my wheelchair is the seat which provides me with the support I need, so it's where I sit when I'm not in bed.
TV and radio keep me entertained while I knit, in the living room - in the bedroom I have another radio, plus my audio books. I made a conscious decision not to have a TV in my bedroom any more when we moved in here, nearly two years ago. I didn't want any temptation to stay in bed all the time, when I was trying to get up a few hours every day, plus I don't like a lot of electrical stuff in the bedroom anyway. I think I already have too much in there!
Now that we have a DVR (we have Sky+), I no longer watch stuff just because it's on. I always have things to watch which I have made a choice to record for later. However, as with the blogs and mailing lists, I do tend to keep watching programmes just out of habit, or because they are series-linked (which means the DVR records every episode automatically).
So I sat down today and pruned my programme planner. I looked at each series or individual programme on there, whether recorded or upcoming, and asked myself if I really felt it was worth my time. Was it enjoyable? Was it positive? Was I just watching it from habit, or because I thought I should?
Once again I felt the weight lift from me as I worked my way through, and was delighted at the end of it to realise that, next time I looked, all I would see there would be things that I knew were really worth the energy it would take to watch them.
That wasn't the end of it, though. I had also read on Green and Quaker blogs about the idea of Green Sunday, an energy-saving day every week. I can't make my Sunday entirely fossil-fuel free: I have an electrically-powered oxygen concentrator, which keeps me supplied with oxygen, and I cannot use candles or other naked flames for lighting because the oxygen is so flammable. But I can turn off the TV and radio, avoid the computer, and spend time with my thoughts, enjoying the peace and silence, and my freedom from the tyranny of the mad little one-eyed god in the corner of my living room.
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I hope the pruning works. I know that feeling of liberation. It's not just that one stops doing what isn't truly enjoyable or helpful . . . but it's the thought of all the other things one can do with the freed up time.
That's where, for me, it begins to go wrong. I do the new things . . . then I wonder whats happening with the old ones . . . and creep back to see . . . and then find I'm doing double what I was before.
It's a horticultural parallel.
Lucy
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