the art of disconnecting

I'm sitting here on the computer for the fifth evening in a row thinking about what people use to do with all their free time away from technology. Lately I want those days back. I get tired of staring at a screen all evening working on various homework or work related projects. Technology is great don't get me wrong but it has made many of us (me included) lazy. I use to play when I was a kid. I spent many days running around the farm with Amanda and swinging on the hay rope in the barn landing in huge bales of hay, feeding horses, or going swimming in the lake or river for that matter. Now people would look at you like you are crazy, everyone has allergies, or whatever. Everyone including pre-k students are "plugged in". I finally got text messaging on my phone and I admit I love it, but when I started to write my first paper for the class that I am in I found myself doing some of the things I do when typing a text message as my phone is equipped with a full qwerty keyboard. I was appalled at myself. It's ironic isn't it that I am complaining about technology when I am posting a blog. I just think there needs to be a balance is all and in America we aren't really balance kind of people. We do everything to the extreme whether it is laziness or being overworked. So, how do I disconnect?