Internet v. duck-feeding

Tonight we fed the ducks at the pond; we were heading out with stale bread when our neighbor stopped us, ran to his garage, and brought out a huge bag of corn to give us. So we fed the ducks with abandon.

Then we drove to the mall for underwear and socks.

The semester has begun, and I've been thinking about how to keep my calm, unruffled mind as I move out of the summer and into the hectic season of school. Already, there are reasons to be ruffled. Chief among these is that I have grown accustomed, through the magic of the internet, to getting immediate answers to all of my questions. Often, I will get responses to my emails before I've even logged out of my account. This tends to lengthen my email sessions, and it's not uncommon that I can sit down, intending just to send a couple of messages, and look up two hours later, having had entire conferences in that time.

Only now, I'm waiting for responses from several people who do not use email frequently, and it. is. excruciating.

But I'm trying to look at this as a gift. I do so much work on email that I am always, always accessible. I check it frequently because someone just might need my help, have a question, need something from me. There was a time when we did this in order to stay in touch with our students - but students no longer rely on email. And so I'm thinking that there is room to disconnect, just a little. It would be ok for me to not check my email the first thing every morning and the last thing every night.

And then maybe we could do our underwear shopping and duck-feeding during the day.