We had moved into a new space for the new year, and were taking time to assemble our lives with Allen keys, break down boxes and find places for things. I felt good. Things felt uncomplicated. Simple, somehow.

It took me a while to realize that we hadn’t moved the internet over. I know. Who am I?!

I’d been without it for almost a week when we plugged back in, and even though I wasn’t off the grid (my smartphone had been flexing its 3G muscle a ton) ‘reentry’ made me a little sad to be honest.

There was such a freedom in doing my own thing without being tracked and all my semi-compulsive checking in. And sure, that also meant that I wasn’t engaging and sharing and being a social media butterfly, but do we always have to be that way?

Nope.

I found myself crafting a resolution on the fly.

This year? Less on line, more in life.

I’m not going to write every week if I don’t feel it. I’m not going to tweet if I don’t want to. I’m throwing the compulsion to tell stories before they’re ready right out the window too.

I mean, who wants that?

It’s like eating a muffin fresh out of the oven when you have clearly seen bits sticking to the toothpick you pull out from its centre, but you tell yourself that it’s just moist. Even though you know it’s not moist —it’s just not done. And you can’t make it ready. It needs to bake longer, plain and simple. And sometimes stories, and blog posts, and ideas have to bake longer too.

It’s easy to get caught up in everyone else’s frequencies and formulas. There is an urgency to publish, and broadcast, and collect comments-and-likes-and-retweets and all kinds of strange, digital validation. But it’s also ok to unplug. And it’s downright lovely not to care when others are tweeting and when they’re writing or how often. You’re not writing their story, after all. You’re writing yours —and you won’t disappear like Marty McFly if it doesn’t get told in its own, unique time.

In the few nights before WIFI came home to roost, Cap and I broke out the SNES, and played Zombies Ate My Neighbours, Ranma 1/2, and Donkey Kong Country.

We got our controller cords tangled, and had to find the perfect folded paper wedge to shimmy into the console so our games played. We fixed our cartridges by blowing imaginary dust specs from their ridges.

And we found our reset button.

Mantra: Never mind what everyone else is doing. The right moment always arrives at the right moment.