Reclaim your brain and get outside
At home, a wood pecker on my siding turns me into a squawking old lady. At the cabin, it’s the peaceful sound of nature.
Happy Earth Day! Although Lloyd’s Landing won’t be open for another ten days, Earth Day is a great reminder that we all need to get outside, breathe the piney air—if you are so lucky to be near a forest—and just be quiet in the presence of nature and any humans or pets that you may be fond of.
This is important, not just because nature is awesome, but because your health and welfare depend on it. A growing body of research suggests that prolonged social media use results in higher levels of anxiety and depression. The old phrase, “Be the person your dog thinks you are” has been replaced with “Be the person you pretend to be on Facebook.” Rightfully, people want to put their best foot forward on a medium that in one way or another, cannot be erased. But staying online for too long can affect your self-esteem, memory, attention span, quality of sleep, and ability to connect with others in real life. And all of these factors in turn, affect overall mental health.
Current research says that 90% of people are always within three feet of their devices. Raise your hand if you keep your phone on the nightstand to charge it over night. Keep your hands up. Now, how many of you check that charging phone in the middle of the night? That same research says that 52% of you do. This is merely habit, not a necessity.
Although the research is preliminary, there is plenty of anecdotal data to suggest that disconnecting, even occasionally or for short periods of time, has significant positive effects. Jewish families who shut off all their electronic devices every Friday evening and leave them off until sundown on Saturday report that their families have become closer and more joyful.
There’s a very expensive camp in Northern California where you can go and have your electronics sealed away in a hazmat bag for a week while you commune with fellow technocrati, apparently comparing notes on how your life spun so far out of control. For a lot less money, you can come to Lloyd’s Landing. You can bring the whole family, or you can keep it to just you and the loons. You’ll get a quiet night’s sleep. You’ll recover from the blue light strain that your devices have wreaked on your eyes. You’ll remember that sense of touch involves more than just your thumbs tapping on gorilla glass.
Of course, if you should you snap a few pictures of all that glorious nature while at Lloyd’s Landing, please post with the hashtags #lloydslanding and #midmodlakelife. We didn’t tell you to stay offline forever, after all.
Spring is here! #lloydslanding #midmodlakelife