Place Cards

Los Angeles, California

Lynnette and I were playing Yahtzee (or maybe it was dominos) at the table in my dining room. My dining room is a little askew, as during the pandemic I moved the table into a corner between a bookshelf cabinet and a buffet. I needed room to do aerobics and both the hardwood floor plus the mirrored wall made it the perfect place. And... that was six years ago. Now the table has one of its leaves in so it is a table for six. Joel can't remove the leaf because of his shoulder injury, so the now-larger table still sits towards the corner of the room, and I've found that, even though it looks a little wonky that way, it's perfect for playing games and leaves me all the room I need to traverse back and forth and front and back to my aerobics greatest hits.

So, that's just backstory. The story is that I was putting something away in the buffet and found the small silver-colored box that holds place cards. I haven't had any kind of event at my house that would warrant the use of place cards in about two decades. But there they were, resting in the box. They dated back to a time when i had learned calligraphy and how to do calligraphy with gouache paint. I wasn't too bad at it. Other cards sported names printed with alphabet rubber stamps. Another blast from he past. There were some Christmas place cards with the names of family members. Our family was small and is now non-existent, except for me, so seeing those names felt sadly nostalgic. There were cards for friends and distant relatives who had come for a visit and were included in Easter brunch or dinner. I showed all these to Lynnette.

I did calligraphy before I came up with my brilliant idea that I should limit my interests to three things (see About Me below). I had also learned to knit and golf, took yoga classes, and attended immersion Spanish workshops. My head was easily turned by hobbies that others had pursued. Life was eased by limiting my interests to three. But in looking at those place cards, I was reminded of the time it took to create them. Time which also went towards planning the event, cooking, setting the table, arranging flowers, etc. These days I barely have the time to devote to my three things: Dancing; writing and cooking. Hmmm. Where is the big time leak?

I am increasingly concerned with smart phone use. It started with the awareness of the toxicity of social media. That concern was for people around me, as I never engaged in social media. But recently I heard about the smart phone challenge, and how giving up use of our smart phones for even a fortnight actually increased our cognitive functions. That's certainly a concern, but a greater one to me is how much time I'm wasting. Since I'm not on social media, my smart phone use is mostly for checking texts, emails, and weather. And yes, to come clean, a bit of shopping (never Amazon). I listen to a meditation podcast at bedtime as well as in the morning. And I listen to music stored on my iPhone. At the end of each week, a report pops up that says I am on my phone for about four hours each day. That's a part-time job! With an extra four hours a day, I could pick up an extra hobby or resume Spanish lessons. I could write more posts here, dust off my novel, cook as much as I did during the pandemic.

Someone once said that Facebook should have been called Timesuck. But I'm finding that the smart phone, affording us access to all information at any time, is the real timesuck. Because once you reach for it to check something out, you are in the vortex. And being in the vortex means you are not creating anything.

Looking at those place cards was a reminder of life before timesucking. And made me yearn for those days. Could I undertake the smart phone challenge? Probably not. But I can be more mindful that every time I pick up that phone to do anything other than calling a friend, I am tearing up time which is more precious by each day that passes. Life is made of time. And it is unconscionably true that our smart phones are squandering it.