Aspiration Number Five ~ to Limit Screen Time

Suzuki Association of Minnesota Piano Graduation

Mary and her Book 7 Trophy

Warm Fuzzies All Around

Teacher's Purple Dress Code

Peter performed Bach so beautifully 

Spring Break Brunch

My newest piece

22 Years and Counting--the love of my life

The show must go on. . . 

Well. Here we are. It's Calvin's spring break. Mary's and my official spring break is next week but it's really all mixed up. COVID19 is enabling the sky to fall and we are all cozying down in our social distancing. For people like Bill's folks who live down a country road cul-de-sac in northern Minnesota, social distancing is not too hard. Sometimes a car comes down their road and sometimes it doesn't.

After the obvious victims of the actual illness, my heart next goes out to all the young people and all their spring plans. All the student musicians, and athletes and scholars. All the seniors celebrating the end of high school. So many, many disappointments. Calvin's first recital at the University of Iowa, the SAM Strings graduation. . . proms. . . weddings. . . the list goes on and on and on. We are all just having a giant sad exhale.

Our Sunday family bullet journal meeting where we go over all the events of the week and all the details about rides and rehearsals? It was very short this week.

Everything is cancelled. Calvin will still have his recital runs this weekend--Friday at 5:00 and Saturday at 1:00.  Please check his YouTube channel to catch it live or watch the video. Here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8eTT-pv5u9eEwjlOSquYjg
Or search Calvin Kotrba Piano on Youtube and you will find it. His other Youtube channel is train videos. Don't get confused. I will still serve brownies with a side of hand sanitizer after the music for the die-hards.  We will sit six feet away.

I have time to blog. Lot's of time. Trips are cancelled. The drawers are already pretty clean. Sorry if that makes this entry too long.

The next aspiration of my ten aspirations is to limit screen time. It's not really great timing as I see my screen time is up 137% during the first two days of social distancing. Eventually we don't need anymore shoes on sale and we have seen all there is to see on Facebook and we know the hourly play by play on how many confirmed cases are in our counties.

Still screen time is a big deal to me. My mom limited our screen time growing up. We could only watch 30 minutes of television (remember network TV?) per day. That meant if I really wanted to watch Little House on the Prairie on Monday nights I had to save up a day. And it took all week to earn Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett for Friday night.  Sometimes if only my dad was home he wouldn't notice me nonchalantly slink down behind the coffee table and watch Charlie's Angels invisibly behind his back. He was doing double media with a Louis l'Amour novel anyway.

It was only universal karma that my own kids should have even stricter limits. They didn't even know there was network television until they were ten and seven. Bill and I were able to carefully curate every VHS tape that made its way into our library. On Saturdays and Sunday mornings before church Calvin and Mary could put the tapes in and watch to their hearts content. This allowed Bill and I to sleep past 5:30 a.m. We collected archival Sesame Street, The Wiggles, The Bear in the Big Blue House, Teletubbies (they were weird, but that is where Mary's nickname baby sunshine came from) and as they grew we added Loony Tunes and others.

It was never, ever only about screening content, though that was an important side effect. It was about that which you are NOT doing while you are plugged in. You are not reading. You are not playing with trains and dolls. You are not putting together puzzles and playing games. You are not going outside and playing in the snow. You are not listening to your Suzuki recordings and other music. For music, the kids had a jam box in the living room and in their rooms, and we made copies of all their favorite music disks so they could listen to whatever they wanted whenever they wanted without worrying about damage to the CDs or asking mom and dad to play their disks. We also had a full set of CDs for the car. There were no limits on music.

We were blessed to not have any smart devices until 2009, when I got my phone. Each of the kids got a smart phone when they were 13. And they have computers and school and personal iPads now too. I don't limit their time now. Calvin is 18 and that would be very weird. That train has left the station. Mary is pretty self-governed as well. We are all probably a little too plugged in, but honestly, I worry more about myself than about them. They are mostly super busy with school and rehearsals and practicing and sleep. Mary loves crafts and pens more than video games and Calvin has his own array of stuff he does, like writing a fantasy novel in his spare time.

Of course, here in corona virus land, they are both playing Minecraft together at the kitchen table while I write this. We are not some kind of monks. Still it's creative and they are in the world of blocks together so I'm not too uptight. And they are 15 and 18 years old.

Back to me. . . my temptations? Facebook. Youtube content, some musical and valuable and some junky like capsule wardrobe ideas for spring and how to keep your skin looking like you are 25. I also love watching hours and hours of productivity videos. That is a joke. However, I have gotten a lot of valuable ideas about calendar blocking and bullet journaling which have honestly been very inspirational. Still, remember, it's not only about content. It's about what we are not doing while we have screen time. We are not practicing. We are not reading a book. We are NOT WRITING A BOOK. I repeat, we are not writing a book while we are watching someone else's YouTube video about how to write a book.

I also know that I'm not listening to my loved ones as carefully while I'm on my phone. See aspiration number two.

So, I asked the kids how to set limits on my phone. They were able to show me right away. Now any lack of discipline I have is at least shown to me after 20 minutes.

I'm a little long winded on this today. I always feel like there is a lot at stake about how we spend our time. Writing this reminds me how I want to spend my time. . . with family and friends, practicing, reading and writing. And gardening when the snow melts. And, I like cooking sometimes. We have enough food here in the house to cook for several horses. Socially distanced horses.

Best wishes everyone~stay well and be kind to each other. There was only ever one tattoo I considered getting and it was on my right forearm and it read This Too Shall Pass. But the feeling passed.

And, this too shall pass.
Amen.