180: Day 25: Faculty/staff retreat

Today we had a faculty/staff retreat at Mont La Salle at the Christian Brothers Retreat and Conference Center in Napa, CA. During the welcome/introduction, our principal suggested that we turn off our phones for the four hours. I thought that sounded like a good idea, and turned mine off. Reflecting on our sense of “need” to be connected, I thought about emergencies that might happen that might need my attention, but I couldn’t come up with any that couldn’t wait the four hours. After all, a couple of decades ago I did not expect people to be able to contact me 24/7, so why can’t I do that now?

During a break-out session, I had an hour to do some journaling/reflection, and found a nice shady spot with a beautiful view of the hills of the Napa Valley. My first thought was to take a photo, but then I realized that would require me to turn on my phone. Now, I’m no sketching artist, but I took this as an opportunity to try out some sketching. Attached is the sketch I made. It’s not really to scale, and isn’t in ‘millions of colors,’ but I can look at it and remember where I was–and isn’t that one of the main points of a photograph?