Thursday was the first anniversary of Glenn’s death. I looked into renting a cabin for a night or two like I’d done on the first month anniversary, but the West Virginia and Pennsylvania park services only rent cabins by the week bring the peak season. I decided to take a break at home. I spent the first half of the week cutting down my todo list so I wouldn’t have unfinished chores on my mind, then finished my work by 5:00PM Wednesday and planned to do Friday’s work starting at 5:00PM that day. That way, I could effectively have two days free while only having to take off one day of work.

At 5:00 on Wednesday, I shut down the laptop, iPad, and iPod, and hid them away in a closet. I threw a sheet over the TV, turned all the clocks face-down, and reclaimed the freedom of not knowing what time it is. As before, I made no plans, and just did what I felt like doing as I felt like doing it. I ended up spending a good part of Thursday at the nearby State Forest, finishing a lot of writing on Glenn’s memorial.

By the end, I felt I’d only scratched the surface of the amount of time it would take to really decompress, but I hope I can return to my routine with some perspective on what I’m doing and whether it’s what I should be doing. I do think I should take the tech-limiting methods I used here to carve out a few analog mornings each week.