{"id":9512,"date":"2014-04-22T05:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=9512"},"modified":"2014-04-21T13:09:52","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T20:09:52","slug":"poppies-distractions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/?p=9512","title":{"rendered":"Poppies + Distractions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"poppies1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s good to be back. Taking a week off of blogging was rejuvenating without a doubt, but I also discovered how much my days are anchored by creating my posts, buoyed by the interactions I have with you. Beyond Tuesday of last week, I was completely in a time warp.<\/p>\n

Spring break was amazing. So good, so good. Because many of our friends were out of town, K and I spent the bulk of the week with just each other (M made guest appearances in the late evenings and on weekends, but he works a lot<\/em>). I’ve been on an athletic kick these last few weeks, so we played tennis, went running\/biking around the local lake and practiced handstands. Okay, K practiced handstands and I sat on the porch, trying not to look at my ipad. We had some lovely downtime of painting and picnicking and reading books too.<\/p>\n

\"poppies2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Surprisingly, all this one-on-one time was difficult for both me and K at first. I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d gotten to her being in school for six hours a day, and even on non-school days, she spends a massive number of hours with friends being the extrovert that she is. And poor K: mama time is awesome until the realization hits that there are no friends around to come up with crazy games, because mama’s not so hot with crazy games. It felt a little like we were learning a new dance together — awkward and toe-stepping at first, and gradually, we found our groove.<\/p>\n

More than anything, I found it incredibly challenging staying device-free. It was one of the things I promised to uphold (at least for myself) for the week, and I failed miserably. In lieu of blogging, I instagrammed a little, and quickly found myself getting sucked in, newly obsessed. Whenever K would be busy with piano practice or watching a show, I jumped on my laptop like a drowning woman to a floating log.<\/p>\n

\"poppies3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I tried so hard to unplug from the digital chatter and acutely<\/em> felt withdrawals — have you ever experienced this? I keep hearing and reading about how all this connectedness and flood of information is shaping our society into a giant ball of ADD-ness and I’m definitely exhibiting attention deficit symptoms. As an experiment, I monitored myself one afternoon and found that I incessantly clicked from my email to Instagram to Pinterest then back to email, then oh! I need to research summer camps so I start surfing the internet and next thing I know, I’m watching some ridiculous (yet undeniably entertaining) youtube video about a man who invented an Oreo cookie separating machine. I have the attention span of a gnat, and this has been creeping up on me in the last year. And it’s not lost on me that I’m contributing to the digital chatter.<\/p>\n

I want to regain focus. To cut down on this scattered, stimulus-seeking, device-addicted behavior. I’ve been pretty good about curtailing internet usage before bedtime, though ebooks are my downfall because as soon as I have my ipad in hand, the email-pinterest-instagram carousel begins. I find that painting and crafting helps. I painted quite a bit last week, and I’ve been loving the proliferation of poppies in our neighborhood, which inspired these little gouache\/ink sketches.<\/p>\n

What about you? Do you ever feel like the interwebs is swallowing you whole? How do you whip it back into submission?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s good to be back. Taking a week off of blogging was rejuvenating without a doubt, but I also discovered how much my days are anchored by creating my posts, buoyed by the interactions I have with you. Beyond Tuesday of last week, I was completely in a time warp. Spring break was amazing. So good, so good. Because many of our friends were out of town, K and I spent the bulk of the week with just each other (M made guest appearances in the late evenings and on weekends, but he works a lot). I’ve been on an athletic kick these last few weeks, so we played tennis, went running\/biking around the local lake and practiced handstands. Okay, K practiced handstands and I sat on the porch, trying not to look at my ipad. We had some lovely downtime of painting and picnicking and reading books too. Surprisingly, all this one-on-one time was difficult for both me and K at first. I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d gotten to her being in school for six hours a day, and even on non-school days, she spends a massive number of hours with friends being the extrovert that she is. And poor K: mama time is awesome until the realization hits that there are no friends around to come up with crazy games, because mama’s not so hot with crazy games. It felt a little like we were learning a new dance together — awkward and toe-stepping at first, and gradually, we found our groove. More than anything, I found it incredibly challenging staying device-free. It was one of the things I promised to uphold (at least for myself) for the week, and I failed miserably. In lieu of blogging, I instagrammed a little, and quickly found myself getting sucked in, newly obsessed. Whenever K would be busy with piano practice or watching a show, I jumped on my laptop like a drowning woman to a floating log. I tried so hard to unplug from the digital chatter and acutely felt withdrawals — have you ever experienced this? I keep hearing and reading about how all this connectedness and flood of information is shaping our society into a giant ball of ADD-ness and I’m definitely exhibiting attention deficit symptoms. As an experiment, I monitored myself one afternoon and found that I incessantly clicked from my email to Instagram to Pinterest then back to email, then oh! I need to research summer camps so I start surfing the internet and next thing I know, I’m watching some ridiculous (yet undeniably entertaining) youtube video about a man who invented an Oreo cookie separating machine. I have the attention span of a gnat, and this has been creeping up on me in the last year. And it’s not lost on me that I’m contributing to the digital chatter. I want to regain focus. To cut down on this scattered, stimulus-seeking, device-addicted behavior. I’ve been pretty good about curtailing internet usage before bedtime, though ebooks are my downfall because as soon as I have my ipad in hand, the email-pinterest-instagram carousel begins. I find that painting and crafting helps. I painted quite a bit last week, and I’ve been loving the proliferation of poppies in our neighborhood, which inspired these little gouache\/ink sketches. What about you? Do you ever feel like the interwebs is swallowing you whole? How do you whip it back into submission?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-black-and-white","7":"category-gouache","8":"category-illustration","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9512"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9538,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9512\/revisions\/9538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanaeishida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}