Now that we’ve returned home from being out West and are back at the farm here in Tennessee, I’ve decided to take some time off… a year off, to be exact. Not a year off work, but off the internet.
It may seem strange to write a column about taking a year off the web for a magazine where most of its readers are Amish who don’t often use the internet anyway. The desire to unplug—or, more honestly, to understand why it could be important to do so—is already there for Plain people. But for me and the journey I’m on, these are new things that I’m still discovering.
I’ve been thinking about disconnecting for a good while now, thinking seriously for the last year or so. If you’ve read some of my earlier columns, you know that I’ve been slowly ‘dumbing-down’ my phone and simplifying our vehicles and lives to be more present in my life and community. Last summer, I took a hiatus from the web for a month and, since then, felt called to go deeper. Up until now, I hadn’t found the right time to make the choice and commit to it. And so, as Indy and I were pulling away from the lodge in Montana, I took one last look at Google maps on my laptop, wrote down directions for the 1,750-mile drive home, disabled wi-fi, and off we went “to the woods.”
Packing the van for the ride back home to Tennessee
My hope is that by disconnecting from the web, I can connect on a deeper level here at home with our farm, land, and community—with my family and friends, with God, and with the things that truly matter in life. I’m 57 years old, and who knows how much time I, or any of us, have. I want to live deliberately.
I love the Thoreau quote about his time at Walden Pond and his desire “to front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” For me, here at our farm a half-century later, my journey “to the woods” is less about the actual woods and more about going to a place we don’t know, where most other people aren’t, to see what I can learn there. To see what it has to teach me about life so that I don’t look back and say “I wish I had…” or wonder “what if.”
Most of my family and friends think I might be a little crazy. They mostly love their smartphones and iPads and all the things the web brings to their lives. For them, the ease of having access to everyone and everything all the time is wonderful. They love that they can push a button and Amazon will deliver whatever their hearts desire to their doorstep the next day.
For me, it’s more complicated than that. I’m not sure I want those things all the time. As a matter of fact, I’m sure I don’t want them all the time. I want something more than just more stuff. Or more information. Honestly, I want less of most of these things.
After you’ve had GPS on your smartphone or vehicle for the last ten years or so, it can be a bit of a shock to your system to hold a Rand-McNally map in your lap again and try to make your way through downtown St. Louis, looking for the sign that will get you onto I-64 South. But after a day or two of doing it, and a few missed exits, I began to actually enjoy not knowing what was ahead of me. It’s a bit of a lost art; driving with a map, or even more so, remembering directions in your head and reading road signs. Like everything else, we utilize these devices so that we can be freed up to do more important things when we drive like... well, I’m not sure what’s more important than that, but still most everyone chooses their destination and lets their phone or car tell them how to get where they’re going these days.
My smartphone or car doesn’t know how to get where I’m wanting to go. I’m headed to a place back in time, to a decade or two ago when these things didn’t exist. To a time when we still had our problems, but they weren’t digitally compounded in the way that they are today. I just want to unplug from the great big world and plug into the little one I’m part of.
After three days of driving, we got home here to Tennessee safe and sound. After unpacking, the first thing I did was unplug the internet router at the farmhouse. And just to be sure it was off, I climbed up onto the roof of the back porch and cut the United Internet cable that was running to the house.
There was something liberating about cutting that cord. Something that made it feel like I was doing much more than just turning one cable into two with wire-cutters. I was embarking on a new journey. And although the decision was mine, I wasn’t going on this adventure alone. In cutting that cable, I knew I was taking Indy with me on this journey too. Gone for the next year are the Disney movies she loves to watch, the endless music we could listen to on Spotify, and the ability to FaceTime far-away family and friends on the computer. These things will be replaced by a silence that is already taking a bit of getting used to, but I know in time it is going to be so good for us.
I also knew, in another way, we were taking our family and coworkers on this journey with us as well. They all know that things are changing and that to come over to dinner, we’ve asked them to make sure their TVs are off. And since most of my work for the last ten years or so has been connected to the internet in one way or another, that too is going to be a big challenge for them, for all of us.
And although I’m not really sure how it’s all going to work out yet, I believe that it’s going to somehow turn out to be the best thing for us. The closing of that door for the next year will open another one that wasn’t available before.
Last night, when dinner was through and bath- time was over, it was just Indiana and me here at the farmhouse. And it felt so good. It’s been just us for the last six years, but strangely, when a house, even this old farmhouse, is hooked to the internet, it doesn’t really feel like you’re alone. It still feels like you’re connected to everyone and everything.
As I held her in my arms and she read to me before bed, I realized how thankful I am for this time. Thankful that I can take this time to go "to the woods," to be truly, truly with her. Now. When she’s eight years old and not look back someday and wish that I had. //
rory
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Rory Feek is a world-class storyteller, songwriter, filmmaker, and New York Times best-selling author. As a musical artist, Rory is one-half of the Grammy-award-winning duo, Joey+Rory. He and his wife, Joey, toured the world and sold nearly a million records, before her untimely passing in March 2016.