Going Amish

There has been a small voice in my head for a while urging me to turn off our tech. But I don't want to. It tells me that I spend way to much time in front of a screen, and not enough with my family. It tells me that My children are growing way to fast, and I miss way to much of their childhoods, because I am spending time online. 2 years ago I tried to quiet that voice by getting rid of our DVR and cable. Who knew that you could find pretty much anything you want to watch online? Between Hulu and Netflix, we didn't miss a beat. We just started watching TV on the computer instead. And, while that saved us some cash, it didn't really change anything.
At lent the small voice started to get louder.  I was trying to decide what to give up this year. "give up Facebook! " it urged me. But, I didn't want to, so I gave up swearing instead. That lasted all of about 18 hours by the way.
The voice got even louder last night when I was reading one of the Blogs I follow, The Crunchy Chicken. She was talking about a book that she had read, Better Off by Eric Brende. Its about a man and his wife that go to live with the Amish for 18 months. The book intrigued me, and I went directly from her blog to Amazon.com where I promptly downloaded it onto the Kindle on my Iphone.
Now, in my life, and I have blogged about this before, I have found that when I ignore that small voice in my head long enough, it gets followed by a shove. That came in church this morning. We had a guest speaker, who talked about how God did not put us on the planet for us to be consuming all the time. We are here to enjoy his creation. This made me start to think. I have been truly blessed. I have 3 beautiful children, and wonderful husband. How would God want me to be spending my precious time with them? Tending imaginary fields of crops in farmville? Not really.
So, I am going Amish, and I am dragging my family down with me. It will be a one week experiment in tech free living. I'm going to take it one day at a time, because there is a very real possibility that this may actually kill us. Turning off my computer feels a bit like sawing my own arm off. Was there even life before google? How did we find recipes? How did we find the answers to all the random questions my kids ask?
At bedtime tonight, or midnight, which ever comes first, I will be unplugging the TV's. The computer will be turned off. My phone will be used for calls only. No angry birds, no Smurfville, and absolutely NO checking facebook. I may have to actually uninstall a few apps, because I don't think I can resist temptation.
Because I have a few important prior obligations to friends and church, I will have to check my email, but I am going to limit that to 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night.
My plan is to do a daily blog entry about my adventures, which I will write on paper, (gasp!) and then enter onto the computer when my experiment is over.
This should be very interesting to say the least.