The nature of freelancing is unpredictability. I never really know what my life is going to look like from one week to the next. One week I may be running from client to client. Those weeks I get to spend quality time in my car and in other people’s offices or homes. Other weeks, I am doing most web work and I spend almost all of my time in front of my laptop. Recently, I have been doing much more of the latter.
When I’m not working, I enjoy relaxing by reading my feeds, books and articles on either my tablet or phone. That is, until last week. Something happened to my eyes and brain last week that has just completely put me off screens for recreational reading. I can’t quite put my finger on what changed, but when I am done with a day in front of my laptop, the last thing I want to do is pick up another device.
Now, this is not at all what I would call a crisis. I am not short on paper reading materials. We literally have overflowing bookshelves and I have a small pile of magazines to read. We also have a magnificent library system if neither of those options appeal to me on any given day.
But, I’m not satisfied the prospect of just switching back to hard copy reading materials for a while. I enjoy my RSS feeds and miss reading them. I feel out of touch with my world and it isn’t a feeling I like. There really is no paper substitute for the range of blogs and news sources I check in with every day.
I am also puzzled by how I went from loving to loathing my devices in such a short time period. After all, what is a Tech Whisperer without her tech? My answer? Confused.
One possibility is that I tend to stop working at the peak of the day’s heat. All devices (especially my laptop) put out some level of heat. Perhaps neither my eyes nor brain are rebelling. Maybe by the end of the day, I want nothing less than to be near anything that is putting out even a modicum of heat. It’s a good theory, but I don’t think it is really the source of my problem.
My husband recently pointed out that it has been a couple of years since we had our eyes checked. I suspect my eyes are not really thrilled with the amount of time I make them look at glowing screens. While I try to make a point to look up and around every once in a while, I don’t think that is enough. I think I know what to do to make me love my screens once again. I just hope it doesn’t involve getting my eyes dilated.