November 29, 2025
Context for anti-weeknotes
We planned to have a relaxed Thanksgiving, and right before the break began, I posted the following on Bluesky:
Grand plans include cooking, eating, watching way too much soccer, volunteer work, reading, writing, embroidering, listening to music, and playing games. Except for volunteer outreach/fundraising tasks, I hope to stay off my laptop!
So far the last few days have been a true break, even though this isn’t a particularly long one (4.5 days, including the weekend). I realized this afternoon that it’s because I turned off all of the alarms on my phone. There’s the wakeup alarm, the school bus alarm, various activity alarms, etc. And then of course Zoom & Google Calendar send alerts all day about meetings.
I matched my break to school vacation, so I was able to turn off every school, work, activity, and committee alarm. Thanksgiving was just us, so we had no schedule for the day. It’s been really lovely to have a short stretch of unscheduled time.
Well, the only schedules we’ve followed are for soccer matches, and even then, if we miss something, we can rewind, catch highlights, or watch a replay.
I even managed to spend most of my time away from my computer. I did some paper-based planning, writing, reading, and a lot of cooking and eating. Games and embroidery haven’t happened (yet?), but we watched the documentary Los Reyes (A’s choice) and went to Wicked: For Good (M’s choice).
I turned off notification flags on my phone so that I don’t see how many unread messages I have (Mail, SMS, WhatsApp, etc.) — all of the red alerts felt urgent and demanding, and removing the flag immediately calmed my brain. I check in periodically but on my schedule. I’m not sure that I can get rid of all of these alarms in a similar manner, but I wonder if I can change them so that they feel like reminders rather than emergencies...
I've always thought best with a pen in hand, and now a part of this is because paper lets me think without interruption. Nothing is trying to grab my attention or "help" me in increasingly intrusive and unproductive ways. I'm trying to be more intentional about which tools I use and when rather than defaulting to tech devices. Even little things – I closed so many browser tabs today to help declutter my brain.
