On the Second Story Blog, I read about the most radical notion today. I don’t think you can do it. I hope I can, because it looks more refreshing than a bottle of water on a hike above timberline on a July day. But let’s try, shall we? I dare ya.
10 ways to live a more actually
1. Buy a watch and use it instead of looking constantly at your cell phone. This will keep you from obsessing about checking your text messages, email, Facebook mobile or voicemail messages. Plus you’ll be doing the watch-making industry a favor. Watch sales are in the tank.
2. Search for the quietest place you can find to sit there for a bit each day. You might call it meditation or you might just call it stopping.
3. Do something really fun and don’t document it at all. Let those moments belong only to the people who were actually there.
4. Choose to turn off the computer and phone at a certain time on certain nights. Don’t put it in sleep mode. Shut it down. I’ve found that this helps me get to sleep at a reasonable hour.
5. Read books that make you think. Read the newspaper in print form.
6. Write your thoughts in a little notebook and keep them to yourself.
7. Write notes on paper and leave them for somebody you really like or love to find in person.
8. Send a friend a postcard in the mail for no reason.
9. Walk instead of driving. Nothing makes life more real than actually touching the earth with your feet.
10. Really pay attention to the world. Smell it. Taste it. Look at it. Listen to it.
(List by Jim Walker, from his piece called “On the Idea of Multiliving.”)
Beth Bates 
There’s a “Walbicus” day in a couple of weeks. That’s a good day to get a start on #9. Walk, bike, or bus to work or school instead of driving. Carpooling counts too if the others are logistically impossible for you.
I’m trying to do #2 without falling asleep. I saw a bumper sticker today that I need: “Consciousness; that confusing period between naps.”
Okay!
Here’s one to add to the list — try to go through a day without looking at any form of timepiece at all. Obviously, this doesn’t work for a workday, but for a day off, it’s intriguing.
Sundays we sleep late and spend a long, long time at the breakfast table, sipping tea and just chatting. Then it’s off to the Sunday paper, the hammock, a good mystery books, a bowl of popcorn, and some knitting, until hunger hits and one of us (usually, always me) makes a late late lunch. The computer’s off, and anything that looks like work we avoid, except for the essentials like milking the goats or taking care of the new chicks.
There’s an incredible feeling of freedom knowing that, if you feel like it, you can curl up on the bed with the sunshine streaming through the window and just take a nap.
Everything will be waiting there for us the next day, but for this litle oasis of time, our main preoccupation with numbers is the domino score in the ongoing game.
Sounds glorious, like true Sabbath rest.