Saturday, December 31, 2016

Disconnect to Connect

9 weeks after my last post here, I had the best news of my long walk to board certification.  4 weeks ago, the email stopped me in my tracks.  I forwarded it to my other half and asked him to tell me the news.  As if, that would change anything, if I had not made it.  But I like, my self created buffers.  You have probably figured it out by now.  So, yes I am board certified.  As one of my colleagues said, "It's a big deal."  So YES, that's done!!!!

Funny thing that I started writing this post 3 weeks ago and never made it past the first few lines, which I had to edit today.  This is the last day of 2016 and the year has come to an end and what a year this has been.  I finished my training, started my first job, passed my board exam, managed another move and America had an election like no other.  This year has finally made me disconnect from the cyber life.  This probably has been one of the longest breaks from this blog.  I have disconnected from Facebook and this should be interesting to see how will some of my readers now read this blog from here on, since some of the traffic was generated by Facebook.   But I needed to disconnect.  Sometimes the best thing to do is, to do nothing.  I learned that there are limits to my ability to absorb the hostility and negativity.

May be most of us don't think about the 24/7 assault on our senses, when we are constantly scrolling down a screen and may be over time, we just become numb to all of it but in reality it's nothing to become numb to.  The commonest rationalization that I have heard is that, it's not possible to disconnect or this is the way now or it's not practical to disconnect.  Mostly because we don't know what will it be like to not have the constant stream of mostly nothingness coming at us.  I believe that for a lot of us, it takes something incredible to happen to take that leap.  And once that happens the first few days are hard, like an addict coming off of a drug.  Eventually the detox is complete and life opens up in other ways of communication.  The brain and heart gets a break from the light from the screen and the scroll showing an ongoing plethora of memes, news fake/real, opinions, judgments and righteousness, along with faces, places, foods and lives being lived online.  It's refreshing, renewing and relaxing.

Immersing self in community, family, people around you, and living in your own village, when the city starts to plummet in the direction that makes you lose sleep at night; is probably the most natural instinct and survival skill humans know.  So as I heard one of the journalists on NPR, say that their new year resolution was to disconnect and why?, I truly knew what he meant and the feeling he was looking for.  So my 2017 and hopefully many years afterward, will continue to be connected to my village while discontinuing from the noise around me.

Happy 2017 to all.  Here is to hoping that the world survives the brewing storms ahead.