In case I haven’t explicitly said it on the internet yet, I moved back in with my parents last month. I’ll be here for the next six months or so.

I grew up in this house; as a teenager/young adult, I hated my hometown for a lot of the reasons I appreciate it now:

• It takes forever to get anywhere. The closest Trader Joe’s is over an hour and a half away. My Wednesday night tap class requires a three-hour journey to get there and back.

• There aren’t a whole lot of interesting things to do aside from being outside. The local mall has been 75% abandoned for several years, there’s approximately one local coffee shop, and I run the risk of bumping into someone from high school at the movie theater. Fortunately, my parents have an incredible backyard filled with wind chimes, swings, flowers, plants, and birds.
  
  As I write this, I keep glancing at a woodpecker(?) picking at one of the many bird feeders nearby. I am also covered in bug bites.

• Rarely is anything automated or “efficient.” If I want to make a doctor’s appointment, I have to call. If I want to book a Pilates session, I have to text the instructor and we manually find a time to meet. The post office has one very chatty woman who knows everyone, so it’s rarely a quick trip.

Finding silence in a place like this is really easy. To be honest, you kind of have to actively go looking for a lot of noise.

I recently started a study group with Cody Cook-Parrott for their newly-released book, The Practice of Attention. (Side note: I think I can only read books in groups now? lol. What a genius idea!)

It’s week two and we’re entering our digital detox experiment. Last night, I set some ground rules for how I’d like to limit screens and digital consumption this week.