report from hermitpalooza 2011.

My three days of no internet & no phone were an unqualified success. It felt very peaceful and purposeful, and seems to have given my neck knot time to heal. Apparently that's from the way I sit at the computer, not from the way I sit when I work. The more you know...

As it turned out, I did end up spending most of the time hermitted in my apartment. On Friday I slept sinfully late and spent most of the rest of the day rereading Ender's Game. It's still brilliant and painful. I cleaned the already mostly clean kitchen and watched something vague on TV while I tidied up my workspace. My parents called, and I answered. Because I am not a monster.

Saturday, I made a quick run to the grocery store and then made sourdough bread and a triple batch of pickled red onions. Oh, vinegar and sugary, peppery spice! Four days later, the house still smells faintly of brine when I come in from outside. I made a list of all the things I want to get done this summer. I separated it into things that required the internet, and things that could be started right away. I got several of the non-internet things done, pulled books for an ambitious summer reading/rereading list, and then started reading Geek Love. Dysfunctional carnival family rabbit hole, meet Kateri.

Sunday morning, I lingered over coffee and Geek Love, took lots and lots and lots of new product photographs, and then did the rest of the short-term non-internet projects. I gathered information I might need later for the internet projects and redid my list, along with a rough calendar for the next six weeks. I went back to Geek Love, and finished it Sunday evening over a beautiful sushi dinner. (It's an incredible book. The writing is wonderful, and the scope of the misery is operatic. I didn't like any of the characters, with the exception of one peripheral character. Some of them were sympathetic, and many of them were occasionally lovable, but they were all fundamentally unlikable. I think that's a major achievement: a perfectly paced novel of unmitigated misery and dysfunction that's thoroughly enjoyable and compelling.)

My three days were delightful, and a reminder of how much I can accomplish without feeling rushed, and still have hours and hours to devote to reading. It's not possible or desirable to live that way all the time, but it's a good short-term habit for me. I ended up resolving to take one day a week off from phone and internet for the rest of the summer. Sundays, probably. It's much harder to do that during the school year, when I need the whole weekend to run the business that I neglect during the week. I'll just try to soak up my focus and silence while I can get it this summer.