The Game

The past few months, since I returned from Spain, have been busy ones. First, of course, was the attempt to catch up with everything that had been neglected during travel: bills, laundry, house, dog. And the game. The game I'd found through Facebook not long before we'd left home. Three weeks away had made me very hungry to play.

Slowly (or perhaps not so slowly), the game edged its way into more and more of my time. Sewing time lessened. Blogging time became nearly nonexistent except for trying to write about the trip. Reading time took a back burner. The game was addictive.

Then, recently, some things happened that seemed to point out the obvious. It took a little while, though, for me to recognize the confluence that was happening. Somehow, these things all came together:

• My pal Julie wrote that she was leaving Facebook. It had become a life weed.
• Preparation for the hectic last two weeks of the year caused me to resume my practice of list making. My little piece of penciled graph paper became my constant companion.
• A new year came and with it came an urge to purge. Himself and I are going through the house and filling bags and boxes with stuff, things we no longer need -- heck, some are things we never needed -- as well as tired clothing, dust catching knickknacks, books we won't read again.
• A brief visit from my brother-in-law, one of the most goal-setting and self-disciplined people I've known. When he first got email, he developed a practice of dealing with it one time per day, first thing in the morning. And I believe that these many years later, that is still his habit. When he visited, he spoke of the reading he was doing in preparation for an upcoming trip.
• I found the time to go visit the article that had inspired Julie, the Life Weeds article.

The picture at the top of this post is a bowl of porcelain berries. They are gorgeous. I've loved them for many years and even made a quilt based on their colors. They are also a weed. Their attraction is deadly to a garden. 

The game is a life weed for me. It has consumed time that used to be spent thinking, writing, sewing, cooking, being. 

This morning I pulled it out. Deleted it from my FB page. From my life. Funny how insidious these kinds of things can be. Porcelain berries. Life weeds.