Tuesday, July 16, 2013

My Perrogative

"It's my blog and I'll blog how I want to, blog when I want to, say what I want to, you would blog too if it happened to you!" Go ahead now, get that song out of your head today!

That's my way of saying, yes, I'm still participating in NaBloPoMo for July, just not hitting every single day and definitely using all their prompts. That's the beauty of a blog though, I don't have to. I can do it my way.

Today I'm going to backtrack and use yesterday's prompt.

Monday, July 15, 2013
Do you find it easy to go offline during vacation?

First, I don't take many vacations. Second, our definitions of off line may differ. Third, I hope in the future for it to be possible. 

Let's go through it step by step.

First, there are 7 of us. 7 and a puppy. We collectively have a lot of responsibilities and commitments. It is no easy task to coordinate all of us to do a vacation and, said respectfully, not cheap to do so.

There are plenty of time stretches where I just count us blessed because we are able to eat one meal a day together or spend a little time together at some point in a day. This year has been less than that. The Mr. has a travel client this year and has been almost living on the other side of the country for months on end now. The crush of summer sports has been mind boggling. 

The flip side of all this is all the time we did and do spend together binds us through the crazy stretches.

Crazy stretches though, do not make for vacations. 

Instead they make for short weekends that feel shorter by pushing everything into a few days.

Second, going offline. I'm thinking the prompt writer meant a trip where you leave your place and stay off the Internet, ignore your email, skip listening to your voicemail, put the texts on silent and shun your social sites. 

I'm going to say that since we became a foster family, a vacation where we went offline hasn't happened. 

Sometimes I have felt the need to do a daily check of my connections due to cases and their dramas. Sometimes it's because of not taking the whole pack with us and I feel the need to check in on little people or pets. 

Sometimes I don't disconnect because of the people I have in my circles. I care about them. I like being in conversation with them. I don't necessarily feel like shutting them down for a week or two days of vacation is part of what I need on a vacation. 

Some of the online connecting I do both here on the blog and on social sites, helps me to stay connected to family. I can't take the world on vacation with me. I can't take all the people in my circles or my extended family and so on. Blog posts and status updates and photographs help them see and share in what we are up to. Plus, I'm also a person, that pretty much if I don't do it right away, it gets lost in the piles and lists of I'll take care of that later.

Third, here's hoping for a slightly less connected future. 

This is my own junk, not part of regulated foster care land, but all the years that we have fostered, I have really felt the need to be able to be reached 24/7 by our workers. It's not part of the rules or anything like that. It's just a kind of team player/courtesy thing I feel better doing. 

As long as I've been a foster parent, I've had a cell phone on. 24/7/365. I've stayed connected to my email and messages to be able to handle things as they came.

I suspect that the adoption of Mr. Monkey in the very near future will mean the end of our foster life. 

There are a number of reasons for that and maybe I'll blog on it later, maybe I won't.

I will say, the idea of not holding a licence and in a way, having my life back is appealing. I'd like to clean my house to my own standard and schedule. I'd like to leave my junk where I want to leave it, not where I'm told or regulated. I'd like to do things without giving a note to my worker. I could go on and on here, but you get the idea.

Letting my license go, would mean the possibility of going to bed at night and not having my phone on and in my bed. I could take a day or a vacation and not bring the world along with me electronically. 

I would at least have the option or feel like I had an option I didn't feel like I had before and that is something I'm looking forward to!



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