going 'amish'

My plan was to abandon all the technology on my desktop and in my pockets, maybe buy back a little of the time I fritter away- to fritter away on something else. The devices are deceitful lovers, betraying me at every turn. You wonder how much of your life you spend sitting at traffic lights or standing in line- ponder then the winding path of windows, passwords, & commands that lead to stark and mocking Error! messages. This very window has many a time sent carefully edited sentences off into the nether. I tip-toe through my work here, careful not to anger the soft buttons. My story, 'typewriter' details how much faith I had invested in an electric typewriter -and the following twenty years I composed in longhand after the advent of the 'word processer' turned it into a cartridgeless paper rattler. Me and Mike Nesmith's mom may be the only people left to still be smarting from that dubious advance in word-crafting. About a year ago I slipped away from blogging and into Crackbook. It seemed easier to deliver my sentences directly to the reader- perhaps nudging them to respond so I might deliver more. This is how I ended up waking two hours before I had to be at work slumped over in my chair. But then, an engraved [read; non-returnable] iTouch I received as a gift from a handsome admirer turned my simple frustrations into a mid-life crisis upon realizing; I smoke too much (stay with me here), the Touch practically demands a pocket of it's own plus some place to keep reading glasses on my person (Anyone, is there a large print option?), and how many adapers, chargers, cables, & headsets can one household sustain? I'm talking about a household where outlets are rare enough to force decisions between toast or coffee & the tangle of stepped-on earbuds and cables to long gone gizmos trip one at every turn. None of it is remotely worth the trouble... if I weren't such a people person ;] But seriously, as much as everything about the 'now' prompts me to pine over lost simplicities of the 'then'; I love renewing old friendships and joking with people I haven't seen in a decade or more. I love texting purely because I hate phone calls. I love summoning photos, articles, videos, etc. I love 'sharing'. One thing that put "going Amish" in my head was; I recently married my handsome admirer and had many 'thank you' letters to write (Miss Manners frowns on cards that say 'thank you' and sentences that begin "Thank you for..."). They took an entire week of full time personalized letter composition. But I learned this; judging by the number of thank yous I received for my thank you letters, people still appreciate things in the snail mail that don't beg an investment. Email is a speedy approximation, as long as the router and the modem aren't seaching for ways to screw you. I had a week of no phone- no internet (the honeymoon)- it happened after my resolve to collect addresses and write thoughtful missives on nice paper with my fluffy quill pen and a bottle of ink I found in an old desk. Stamps, 30 mile trips to the closest 'stationary' store, keeping it all timely- a whole new menu of frustration. So I'm revisiting quitting smoking if only to free up some room in the pockets and admitting that I need bifocals or a pince-nez or reading glasses disguised as a tiara.. or something. I'll continue to complain about every tax on my nerves and my purse, but I'll never abandon an opportunity to reach as far on the globe as I am able with idle chatter.