Almost-Amish

Okay. 

Don't panic.

I'm not giving up on technology ...

yet.

And to be frank, I don't think I'd give up altogether. But I do see myself eventually removing myself from all social media. I'll have an email. And a website for our farm. And I'll keep my Blog going. 

Maybe my phone will allow texting. But maybe it won't. 

Here's how I am finding myself at this impending collision with becoming ...

Almost-Amish.

A few years ago, around five, I had no idea where my food came from. Like, truly, I never EVER thought about it. I ate chicken. I didn't ever think about where the chicken came from. I ate stuff. I ate what I liked. And that was how I lived my life.

But now that I am raising meat myself, I am realizing that you can't UNTHINK something you KNOW.

(I know. This seems weird. I'm connecting technology with chickens. But stay with me, and I hope to make sense of avian electronics.)

I think we live in a great world. I think if we got off of technology and into people's lives in first-person, we'd find out that most people are really great people. With the anniversary of September 11th rolling around again, I don't think any of us who were alive then, can forget how it felt to be a united country. 

Didn't that feel 

so

so

good?

Now, it feels like we are:

just

so

divided.

But are we really ... divided?

I don't think we are. I think if we sat down across from each other, we'd find a lot to love about each other. A lot of good. Not nearly as much bad as the COMPUTER tells us there is.

Why

oh

why

do

we

listen

to

the

computer

anyway?

I've already sort of begun not listening to it. I have found the "UNFOLLOW" on Facebook to be a mighty-fine-thing. And if I am not ready for that, then I use the "SNOOZE FOR 30 DAYS." If I don't want to snooze you, I may just click the "HIDE THIS POST" button. So truly, what comes up on my feed keeps me HAPPY.

I don't use any other social media. Instagram just a tiny bit but not much. 

I'm trying to find some time to watch the The Social Dilemma on Netflix. I really think it will meet me at the conclusion I have been drawing for quite some time: that this technological world is actually way "badder" for us then it is "gooder." That all of this ability to connect is actually doing just the opposite. That getting off of technology and into the real world would be much, much healthier. 

In the last few weeks, John and I find ourselves coming closer and closer to not eating any meat unless we raise it ourselves or know who raised it. We actually are eating out less and less and finding it challenging to overcome what we "know" about food having raised it.

And so this is where my "epiphany" with food is colliding with my "epiphany" regarding technology. 

I'm becoming Amish. Or Almost-Amish. I can't UNLEARN what I've learned living out here on my farm. That being removed and just IN THE EARTH is a very SPIRITUALLY WONDERFUL place to be. 

I feel God on my farm.

I hear him in the leaves rustling 

and the ducks quacking 

and the rain sweeping over the mountains.

And more and more I can't help but think:

Why would I purposefully choose 

To let noise in

When it's so quiet here?

My brain is thinking:  

someday soon I am going to be one of those people who only eats the food I have raised and doesn't have a computer and just lives in the present with those who want to come to her farm and visit with her there and she doesn't need to be "certified organic" because the people that buy her food SEE how she raises it and hey just show up because she's given up all the modern things she once thought she could never live without.

I've taken steps back before and friends have encouraged me to keep influencing people through my Platforms. That I have a good message. A message of 

FAITH

FAMILY

FARMING.

And I think I do have a good message. But I can feel it coming. I can feel the need to say: 

NO

MORE
NOISE.

Just like when I go into a restaurant now and see chicken on the menu, and I think I can't eat it because my brain knows how chickens are raised rightly and wrongly, and I can't unsee the wrongly to eat the chicken. 

I am feeling that way about media and technology. That I can't unsee what I am seeing. That it is too painful and too real, and I may just have to say: 

I can't eat that chicken.

And I can't be on Technology.

We will see...