This morass, I thought then, must be a symptom of too much input. Move toward a place so small that everything could be known.
—Kristin Kimball, The Dirty Life
I realize this quote doesn’t make a whole lot of sense on its own. But the phrase “too much input” has stuck with me ever since I read it in Kimball’s lovely memoir on farming and love (along with its words about satisfaction and success).
Kimball found herself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of options in the world – where to live, where to work, whom to date, how to build a life that would sustain and nourish her. She found solace, eventually, by moving to a rural area and focusing on what she could see and feel: an old farmhouse, a few acres, a gaggle of assorted farm animals.
She admits her own folly in thinking she could know everything about her new home: its deep layers of complexity render it still mysterious, a decade later. But as her horizons narrowed in some ways, she found herself living with more intention, more focus, less distraction, even as her to-do list grew by leaps and bounds. (The work on a farm is literally never done; as the granddaughter of two sets of farmers, I watched this truth play out during all my childhood summers.)
I often find myself bewildered, overwhelmed, by the number of possible choices on any given day: where and what to eat, which groceries to buy (Organic? Local? In season? None of the above?), how to dress, which book or blog or tweet to read next. I worry about making the right choices, as if there were one best answer to everything. And everyone, from my family and friends to the great clamoring chorus of the Internet, has an opinion.
Too much input. Maybe, then, the answer is to pull back a little.
I love the community provided by my online life, and I love the vibrancy of working in a bustling city neighborhood. But I need more quiet, less input, more space for pondering and mulling, in my life. I am not sure what that looks like: a social media fast, closing the computer at a certain time every night, going to bed earlier, making more time to journal. Perhaps all of the above.
I am not in a position right now to make a literal move to a smaller place (though I miss the ease of knowing and being known in the small Texas towns where I grew up). But reducing the volume of input, clearing those channels to clear my mind and spirit? That sounds awfully good to me.
I’m figuring these boundaries out right now, too. I just decided to take a big step back for this month. Kind of like pushing the reset button.
I was just reading a book proposal today about how we need to be more mindful about how we use all this technology we’ve created to “better” our lives.
This and your post really resonate with me.
On the weekends I find that all I want to do is unplug and be still.
Like you, I can’t move to rural place. But I wonder what steps we can both take to be more mindful about living.
I recently read The Dirty Life and I loved how she found her life in that rural community. Even though I have no desire to live and farm like that I do crave simplicity and the time and place to unplug. It is always a balancing act to enjoy the online inspiration of blogs and social media and still find ways to step back, mull, muse, and just be.
I think we all struggle with balancing our information overload – and if we don’t we probably should. There is definitely too much input in the modern world. I’m feeling the need to dial back on the amount of it that comes streaming in every day.
One of the things I make a conscious effort to do is not even look at the computer until I’ve had breakfast and done some reading and journaling. I think that gets my day off on a quieter footing. Now I’m working on staying away from the computer at least two hours before bed to help my mind quiet down for sleep.
Baby steps, but it’s a start.