A few years ago, we took a vacation I’ll never forget.

          During that vacation, I took the six days off from the 21st century and never once looked at a computer. I didn’t answer anyone’s emails or write my weekly blogs for the last week of the month we were in. I just lived in what I’ll call a techless world. Yes, I was party to using the GPS while we “Yelped” our way around San Diego and yeah, once I talked on Terry’s cell phone. Oh and yes, I used the computer timer on the oven in our condo we lived in for a week, but the rest of the time I enjoyed the real world right in front of me

          One of the highlights of the respite was having lunch with one of Terry’s professors from WSU. Mr. Mott made a profound and lasting impression on my husband. (Thank you Mr. Mott.) Terry has so much respect for the man he can’t bring himself to call him Robert or, God forbid, Bob. Mr. Mott and his wife Edie are in their nineties and both sharp mentally, mobile and healthy.

Guests of Marla and Robert

We spent that vacation as guests of Flylady and her husband Robert. There were times when I felt a little like a beloved family dog. Marla, Robert and Terry spent a great deal of our living room time on their thingamajigs of choice, while I sat and talked to myself, read a little, wrote on a yellow pad and played "retro" Solitaire. (That’s a game you play with a standard deck of real playing cards, dealt onto a real table.)

Don’t get me wrong, I love the 21st Century and all the geegaws that go with it, but I have to say, the real world is not going to come out with a quicker, smarter, smaller version. It is what it is in its magnificence and I have yet to scratch the surface of what it’s all about, right in my own backyard. 

Life Balance and Inner Peace

I want my virtual life to enhance my real life, not de-hance it. If I want to maintain a balance between virtual and real life, that takes organization. By being organized with my time, I’m able to devote my weekends to a keyboard-free two days.

They haven’t come up with E-food yet, and first they’ll have to come out with E-you and E-me and then we’ll have to feed E-us so we’ll download E-forks, knives and spoons, set an E-table for an E-meal. Since that’s not the case, and my refrigerator is not an E-fridge, I have to go to the real grocery store and get real food to fix for a real dinner tonight.

I love you all as you balance between E and Real.

Love,

P.S. I wrote a lot about achieving balance in your real home in my latest book The Joy of Being Disorganized. Learn how to become a peacemaker not a homemaker.