This week has been increasingly difficult to use my laptop. I understand that I put it through a good deal of stress not long ago while typing up another novel, but this is getting ridiculous. Yet, as I sit and wait for the screens to move as I want them to, I can hear the processor continually moving. It's slow to wake up. It's slow to load. It feels like my laptop is working through mud.
I recently read that if a person has to wait more than five seconds for a page to load, they will leave the page and move on. Our patience as a society is dwindling. Not long ago, it was said that children have the attention spand of twenty minutes. If you were to sit down right now and put on Disney Jr. or Nick Jr. you would find that shows last approximately eighteen minutes or less. Why? They know kids don't have the attention spand for more. However, that number has dropped. In a recent study, it showed that kids were only lasting to twelve minutes. I can't say that I'm surprised by these numbers at all. Not long after reading how much time it takes to abandon a site, I was loading a page. I don't know if I lasted a three count before discarding it to the internet. I felt a tinge of guilt about it, but at the same time, I just didn't care about what was waiting for me on the other side of my phone enough to last through the time it needed. If it was important, I would wait. My patience isn't completely gone. Perhaps these numbers are skewed a bit. Still, I used them to focus on my patience levels. This week, the computer has been a continual reminder of my want for things to be done right away. I want my pages to load. I want to do my work. I want to print those pages. I want to be done. Sometimes I feel like that is the driving force of my life. Get it done to be done. I rarely find myself doing something because it was what I wanted to do. It's work. It's all work. The sooner it is done, the sooner I can do what I want. But what is it that I want to do? Thankfully, my computer has reminded me of that too. I want to rest. I want to sit with my kids and not think of the things that need to be done, but of their sweet laughter at the movie, their creative brains in that game, or their continual chatter as a means of showing their love. I want to read a book for my enjoyment. I want to journal for my heart's happiness. I want to walk because I enjoy it. I want to throw on a movie because my brain needs a break. I just want to rest. My computer has been telling me that as well. When I am up and down, open and close, and going from web to Word, it simply wants to rest for a moment. It needs to regather and figure things out in the order we give it. It wants to be put to sleep the way it was manufactured to, not the way that's easiest to me. Lately, I have focused on resting. I have focused on enjoying the time away from work and letting things sit for just a moment longer. My body takes a deep breath and exhales away tension in my back and neck, if only for a moment. Our bodies are made to rest. They are made to take a day away from work and relax under the afternoon sun. I had an epiphany. My diagnosis of fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and everything else can really suck. All of the symptoms and pains make life a little miserable. But when I string together days or weeks of flares and pain, I force myself to rest. This is not a fun disease by any means. But if it teaches me patience and rest, then I'm happy to deal. Life continues to move whether I am capable of doing so or not. I'd like to be capable. And that means, rest. So as I post this, please know, I will be putting the computer to sleep the way it was designed to, as I also hope to rest this afternoon, as I am designed to.
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AuthorI have a lot to say about a lot of things. Archives
May 2023
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