On my first weekend last fall, I eagerly shut it all down on Friday night, then went to bed to read. (I chose Saturday because my rules include no television, and I had to watch the Giants on Sunday). I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.

Living a good life requires a kind of balance, a bit of quiet. There are questions about the limits of the brain and the body, and there are parallels here to the environmental movement.

Who would say you don’t need time to think, to reflect, to be successful and productive?

I believe that there has to be a way to regularly impose some thoughtfulness, or at least calm, into modern life. Once I moved beyond the fear of being unavailable and what it might cost me, ... I felt connected to myself rather than my computer. I had time to think, and distance from normal demands. I got to stop.

From the archive:

All we need to do is remember that reading, in order to allow reflection, requires slowness, depth and context.

To be sure, time marches on.

Yet for many Californians, the looming demise of the "time lady," as she's come to be known, marks the end of a more genteel era, when we all had time to share.

Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs.

Although my grandmother has seen a lot of it, she never liked change much. "The things you see when you don't have a gun" was a favorite expression, delivered on encountering any novelty or irritant.