Last February, I went out of town to visit my mother-in-law, Betty, who was in the final stages of cancer. During this trip, I hung out with my 15-year-old niece, Lauren, who lives close to her grandmother and was spending a lot of time with her during these final days.
I have a confession to make. Every year, my holiday cards are late. I just don’t get around to mailing them out until I go on vacation a few days before Christmas.
I awoke from a drunken stupor sharply at 5:02am, the morning of New Year’s Eve, 2006 with a migraine, and a voice in my head, that said clearly and firmly, “That’s it. You’re done.”
To meet the requirements for my social work license and stay current on advances in the field, I recently went to a seminar on Internet Addiction. The first thing the presenter did was to ask everyone to put away their phones and refrain from using the internet and email features of the phone until the course ended 6 hours later. What?
One day a few weeks ago I found myself at loose ends. I had caught up on my paperwork, and I couldn’t find a good book to read or a good TV show to watch. I had spent some time online earlier in the day, so I didn’t even want to turn on my computer.