Well, hello there. My name is Morgan Harbor Nichols. I'm an artist and a writer, and this is a space where I share words that I hope can make a little room for you to slow down and take a few deep breaths as you prepare for whatever lies ahead. Thanks for being here today. And now on to today's episode. So today's episode begins with a story from by early college

years that may sound a bit random, but I hope that you can just stay with me. So back in my sophomore year of college, I believe,

I got my first MacBook computer and I was so excited. And of the many things that I was excited

about was the fact that with the computer, there was a dictionary that was installed into the computer and you could access that dictionary

when you weren't connected to the internet. And the other day, I was thinking about how excited I was

that I had this dictionary because when I was in college, I didn't always have like a Wi-Fi

connection or anything and I would have to connect to the internet through some cord. So it was very important to me that I had access to this dictionary, this

digital dictionary that I didn't have to be connected to the internet to use. And as I reflect

on this story all these years later, I think about how I made such a big deal of it when reality,

there are so many things that you don't have to have the internet for in order to enjoy them

or make use of them, such as books. They've only been around since the 1400s and they're all over the place and there's plenty of

access to them that I've had. And it's so funny to me how I got so excited about something on

my computer that I didn't have to use the internet for that I kind of forgot that there's all

these other ways that I could get that same information

from a physical book.

And when you think about that list of things that we can use that we don't need the

internet for, it only continues to grow even beyond books, anything from walking or

strolling to hiking, fishing, gardening, picnics, visiting the

local library, making art, cooking. But the problem with that list a lot of times is that we've

heard these things so many times before. We have all been in a very interesting time over this past year and a half,

and we've all heard so much about screen time and needing less screen time and being so

connected to our devices and being overconnected. And I don't know about you, but oftentimes

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