The little angel is on spring break this week. Yesterday, we packed up our laptops and headed over to the library for a change of scenery. She had to make an ABC book, which is a document with a fact about the American Revolution for every letter of the alphabet and an accompanying picture.

There was a lot of typing and formatting and then I crashed her buzz by explaining image copyright as she pulled willy-nilly from Google Images. This led to some frustration and a discussion of Wikimedia Commons and then she started down the tedious path of formatting everything again.

After about two hours, she looked over at me. "This is boring," she said. "I think I'm getting a taste of what it's like to have a job."

WELCOME TO THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, GRASSHOPPER.

I've been writing a bit on BlogHer when I haven't been here:

• When Should You Let a Girl Start Shaving Her Legs?

• How to Fight Your Running Jealousy

• Have You Had These Running Injuries?

• When the Holidays Are Over and He Didn't Propose

• 3 Approaches for Organizing Your Closet

I'm obsessed with Netflix's House of Cards. Partly because I have over the years inherited my sister's respect for Kevin Spacey and his I-look-perfectly-normal-and-now-I-will-eat-your-face acting and partly because I've adored Robin Wright since I first glimpsed her cheekbones in The Princess Bride. She's got an uncanny poker face; she had it then, and she has it now. 

I've discovered something about myself, too. I think I love House of Cards and Mad Men and Downton Abbey and pretty much anything featuring the Tudors because I'm fascinated by a society of people who hold their cards so close to their chests. I mean, face it, here I am writing on my public website about my feelings for actors whom I will never meet. Imagine if I were to hold my feelings in! I might explode.

There's something else: Last night as I watched the season finale (sob) of House of Cards, I was struck by how many people those characters came in contact with on a daily basis on The Hill. Much like the vast number of people on Madison Avenue in Mad Men, the show that makes staying married look like a full-time job. Or Downton Abby, where you get dressed even if no one's coming over because SERVANTS.

It's an interesting scenario to me as I sit here typing this post in my workout gear because heaven knows I'm going to work out sometime today, but even if I don't, nobody but my husband and daughter and maybe the drive-through pharmacist at CVS (gotta pick up that prescription today) will ever know. Weeks can go by without me seeing anyone else if I want it that way. People do not expect me to show up well turned-out. The people I interact with on a daily basis are behind screens. My tailored oxfords are nouns and verbs, because that's really all I have to show for myself most days.

I've had jobs that required daily pantyhose and the 'L. I've had jobs that required security swipe badges and pissing contests to see who could use the coolest pen. I've had this job working from home for going on five years now, and it wasn't until last night at Zumba when another WAHM asked if I would meet her at Panera one day a week because she talking to the walls that I actually realized how little I physically interact with other adults on a daily basis, especially when Beloved is traveling. That it never bothered me before is also interesting, because I've always considered myself an extrovert. 

Does it matter that I'm rarely seen? Not my outfits, or my hair, per se, but my facial expressions? My persona? 

As I watched last night's House of Cards season finale unfold, Kevin with his pull-out-the-stops ambition and Robin with her show-nothing-but-wear-clothes-requiring-shapewear cool, I realized maybe I'm just not capable of hiding my emotions like that. Of course, they are actors. Maybe normal people can be actors, too, which is something I hadn't really considered before. Playing daily life on stage could be fairly exhausting. Though being completely authentic and therefore vulnerable is exhausting, too.

These are the moments when television adds rather than detracts from my life. Because I'm still wondering this morning -- would I be different if I were more often seen?

I remember a stopwatch in my childhood. I think it belonged to my father, though I'm not actually sure. I got ahold of it one day and started timing how long it took me to do things I normally did. I was shocked to find most of my daily activities took a number of seconds, maybe a minute or two. That knowledge was heavy.

If you think about all the tasks of everyday life in terms of individual actions that take merely seconds each, the day seems to stretch on forever in a ridiculously overwhelming fashion. It takes so many seconds to type each sentence in this blog post, to get a glass of water, to put away the dishes from lunch in the dishwasher. 

Knowing that, too, can be a little intimidating. If it really only takes a few seconds to do things, what the hell am I doing all day?

I thought about that sort of thing last night when I really wanted myself to work on PARKER CLEAVES but I was really tired from a full weekend and doing some work for my job already. I set the stopwatch on my phone for fifteen minutes. I wrote until it went off. I haven't read it over yet. I don't know if it's good. Doesn't have to be -- it's a rough draft. It just has to exist so I can fix it. Thinking about all the little fifteen-minuteses, though, is as overwhelming as the first full day of a new job or a new baby -- wondering how you're ever going to get through so many seconds to the end of the day. That's what writing the rough draft feels like to me. 

I could accomplish so much more if I spent more time realizing how little time it actually takes to do almost anything.

The contractor was in my house fewer than five minutes measuring for a new door to go between the garage and the kitchen. He's the last contractor we'll need to finish up the remodel of Chateau Travolta's kitchen -- other than him, it's stuff we can do ourselves -- install the range hood, finish the baseboard, replace the hardware on the pantry shelves that don't actually work the way they're supposed to, install the pulls. Just this one last guy after we had to fire the cabinet installation people after the third time they failed to show up without warning and replace them with some poor guy who was told the job would take three hours and was at my house from 9 am to 6:45 pm on Friday.

I showed him to the door wearing my usual pre-workout uniform of yoga pants, t-shirt, hat and flip-flops. He looked at me and smiled. "Don't work too hard," he said.

I actually did a double-take and found myself gesturing toward my desk, my laptop, the innards of the Internet -- where I do indeed  work a full-time job with a salary and health insurance and a 401(k) plan and everything. That full-time job covers half my family's expenses and without it, we'd be screwed.

I wanted to wipe the smile off his face.

If it had been just this guy, I probably wouldn't be so pissed off. But almost every contractor who has come into my house has made a similar comment, like they can't fathom I could possibly be working as I sit in my office and type away silently. Every single one of them has felt the need to comment something very similar to "don't work too hard." 

But why do I care what the contractors think? Beloved can't fathom why I would give a shit. They're here to do a job, we pay them, they leave. But it's that I'm here the entire time they are working. I hear the hint of derision in their voices as they ask which website I write for, again? And what exactly do I do there? 

I've given a few of them my business card to end the discussion. Yes, dumbass, I have a business card and a title and a corporate address.

BUT WHY DO I CARE WHAT THEY THINK? I know what I do for a living. I know I work really hard. I know when I need to, I can pull off normal business wear. Would anyone ask me what it is I do again, exactly, if I were typing away silently in an office building when they walked in carrying a ladder? I don't think so.

BUT I STILL SHOULD NOT CARE. WHY DO I CARE?

It's totally bugging me.

It's here. The lead-up to Election 2012. As part of my job, I need to look at it, to look at it with as open a mind as I can muster. I can't hide my head and turn off Twitter and the television, like I'd really, really like to do. It's good, in a way, as it's forcing me to confront the issues of the day and solidify how I feel about them and make sure I get myself to the voting booth on time. 

But wow, I'm really struggling with it. Last night the little angel brought me my bear when I was reduced to tears of frustration and anger at an article I saw on Twitter.

I thanked her and took her to curriculum night at her school and immersed myself for forty-five minutes in all the things that third-graders learn, what sort of help they need and how we can best prepare them for fourth grade by what they learn this year (note: addition and subtraction rote memorization). 

Then we drove home into the darkening sky with the top down. Returned a movie. Got a shake. Walked back into a house strewn with two-hour-old milk and the remnants of dinner scattered across the table because we were so late when we left. 

It is perhaps the collision of such big ideas and issues with the mundane that paralyzes me. Needing to take out the garbage and scoop the cat litter and wash the dishes in the face of such important political movement, knowing I have no time to volunteer nor any money to give -- things are tight all around. I have my voice, and I donate it as freely as I can, but it pains me to tell Planned Parenthood not this time, I understand you've lost your funding again, but I just can't right now. Call back in a few months, maybe things will be different. 

I'm tapped out. That's what I felt when I surveyed the kitchen last night, my laptop still open next to the half-full soup bowl, Twitter updating and updating and updating, the headlines falling off the screen as quickly as they appeared.

Tweet.

Tweet.

Tweet.

---

In less depressing news, I reviewed some prescription sunglasses on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

I wrote a post today for BlogHer admitting that I really can't stand being plugged in all the time -- so I'm not. I know many, many "normal" people who have no problem avoiding social media and email, but not too many people like me -- bloggers, people who work in new media. Am I the only one?

I have a confession to make: I have no problem unplugging. Hello, my name is Rita, I work on the Internet, and I frequently leave the house without my phone. There, I said it.

I started blogging in 2004 and remember vividly sitting next to Liz Gumbinner at the BlogHer Business '07 in New York City watching her use this crazy thing called Twitter on her new-fangled iPhone. I didn't really get immersed in Twitter until 2009 when I joined BlogHer and no longer had to hide my social media use when someone walked by. In fact, I had more of it than ever -- trying to keep up with Twitter, Facebook, internal IM, two e-mail accounts, my blog, everyone else's blog and BlogHer.com was something that took some getting used to. I started having those work dreams about being assigned to catalogue the Internet again, and that's when I knew I had to get a handle on it.

Read the rest on BlogHer.

This week I've been unsubscribing to almost everything that comes into my inbox. A few things I've felt horribly guilty about unscubscribing from -- causes I care about, political updates -- and some I've had to ask myself why the hell I've been deleting this for the past five years instead of just getting off the list. 

I remind myself I know where to find these things if I need them.

I keep waiting for the inbox to die down, if I'll be able to tell I eliminated things or if other things will just grow back to replace them, things from which I can't unsubscribe. People from whom I can't unsubscribe. (Now wouldn't THAT be great?)

I wonder if it will make me feel unimportant or lonely if the inbox isn't flooded. I try to remember the last time this happened. It's not that I am so important, you see, but more that I conduct so much of my life online and get automatically added to new product updates! and great deals! And I've since realized that I don't have any money for great deals, anyway, and my delete finger is sore from all that blah, blah, blah. All I want to do is go read a book, watch a movie, be entertained. I don't want to sort through catalogs or newspapers or coupons or email. I want to sit down and know I will be interested in that which presents itself before me. 

I'm having a day in which everything and nothing is interesting. My concentration lags and my eye keeps going to the window. It's Friday afternoon, and I have a lot to do, and I just don't want to.

I want to hear a story instead.

I think the faster I get through this mound of work, the faster I will get to my story.

Unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe.

Yesterday and Wednesday I was off from work to add a Part II to my novel (fingers crossed, it was a specific request). On Wednesday, even though I forced myself to ignore my work email, I checked my personal email and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of responses and responsibilities and lost almost two hours.

Yesterday, I took a complete and total Internet hiatus. No blogging, no email (!), no Twitter, no Yammer, no Facebook, no LinkedIn. I did text with my sister a little, but I also actually spoke to her on the phone for more than an hour. And last night I called my parents and told them a bunch of things I'd forgotten to tell them in the mad rush of email that is usually my life.

My life is email? Yeah, it kind of is.

At the same time, I'm reading Super Sad True Love Story in fits and bursts, which is a novel about a bunch of people trying to stay young forever who spend their lives completely immersed in little personal data devices that hang around their necks.

A while ago, the little angel asked me if I loved my phone more than her.

The last two days while I've been off, she's gotten off the bus at home instead of after-school care, and we've set up the sprinkler and invited friends over to run through it. The weather has been glorious.

Today I'm back online, back at work, back on email. And I'm determined to not become a Super Sad True Love Story character.

But it's hard, in this world we live in. It's hard.

When I was in college and my friends and I went out to eat (which was more often than not), one of us would inevitably use the restroom and return to a rapidly cooling sandwich or a nearly-gone pizza. It's one of those inevitable laws of life -- things happen when you have no ability to deal with the ramifications.

For instance, if you really want to finally finish scraping wallpaper off your kitchen, wait until your company is launching a huge redesign! And while you're at it, maybe five literary agents will ask to see your whole manuscript almost an entire year after you started sending it out.

I'm scared and hopeful and scared about how this week will end.