Yesterday was a nightmare: my Prius had to go in for an annoyingly-long recall procedure leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere. With inappropriate walking shoes on, I pounded the sidewalks, blisters bubbling, looking for a wifi friendly coffee bar. I wound up in Starbucks, where I had to buy a $5.00 card for the wifi privilege, plus my latte. On opening my screen, a huge box appeared telling me that there’s something wrong with the database of my entire computer so it won’t allow me access to anything – GREAT. I pull out my new cell, the Droid, thinking I can kill time by transferring all my contacts via Google, but oh dear – something’s up with Google and it won’t sync anything, meaning I can’t even use the phone. The jaw-clenchingly annoying thing is that even if I could use the darn thing, there’s NO ONE AT THE END OF A HELPLINE TO TALK TO – oh pleeeeeseee – I just want to talk to someone. Apparently Google doesn’t have a nice human on the other end of the line – neither does Mircrosoft, so I have to wait until I get home only to spend hours browsing troubleshooting websites – actually I don’t even know what to google and end up in forums with disturbed-sounding techno geeks spewing insults at each other!
To cap it all, my little dog is clearly not well. She seemed manically hungry before dinner time, so I gave her a snack, which she promptly brought right back up on my freshly laundered sheets. 
What do you do on a day like this, when everything seems to be conspiring against you? I had 2 choices: either I keep on banging my head against a tech brick wall, or I give up – so I chose the latter and plonked myself on my lovely little meditation bench in my yard with a book.
It’s amazing how complicated technology has become for the everyday consumer. The man who invented the cell phone was on 60 Minutes this past Sunday and he thinks that things have become ridiculously confusing, particularly in the world of Mobile Phones – he even showed a new design that’s just come out which is JUST A PHONE. But honestly, I have a car with such a complex computer system that if there’s the slightest error in it’s configuration, which there clearly was, it could accelerate fast over bumps causing injury or death! I have computer programs running my entire life, which when shut-down render me pathetically helpless and disconnected from a seeming lifeline, and now the new phone! Don’t get me wrong, I love my car, my computer and my phone- when they’re working!!! I love twitter and facebook and being able to connect with thousands of people simultaneously in real time – I love it, but all this instant connection sometimes serves to disconnect me from the pulse of life completely.
Sitting in my sun-drenched yard, watching hummingbirds fighting over the gorgeous pink & purple Fushia flowers at my feet, I made a little pact with
myself that I will visit this special spot at least once a day to re-group, to breathe and to allow myself to feel the pulse of life, which can only be experienced in nature.
I’m a great one for waxing lyrical about how important it is to connect with nature in order to plug into my deepest values, however, truth be told – I get all too easily sucked into that screen. Hopefully today served as a lesson: I got to read a book, I spent more time than usual whipping up some lovely homemade soup, my daughter and I fussed over the sick dog for hours.. and I felt GREAT. Back on the computer now, (my husband came to the rescue with his enviable patience), I’m just quickly checking emails, writing blogs, tweeting, facebooking etc etc before getting out in the yard!!!
