When I was newly married, my friends were getting pregnant in droves. This is LA, and at every baby shower I attended numbers were being traded for celebrity midwives and birthing tub delivery services and places to buy custom baby slings woven by a commune of socialist vegan grandmas in Bolivia.

My husband and I were just starting the process of adopting our son Tariku from Ethiopia. We were at the beginning of a very long, and often isolating, road. Or it felt that way to me, anyway.

It was during this time that I started reading adoption mommy blogs. I began reaching out to the women who wrote them, as well as communicating with adoptive parents on message boards and FB. Before this, I had been a fair-weather connector. But while we were going through this extremely emotional and fairly niche experience, for which we could find very little support in our day-to-day lives, I plugged in hardcore. I have never unplugged since.

When I started my own blog, I went from being an observer— silently trolling for advice, connection, hope — to a writer who is hopefully able to provide these things to someone out there who is tentatively, with a small, throbbing light of hope in her heart, Googling: adoption.

Now, as a mother of a child with special needs, I’m even less of a connectivity naysayer. I don’t sit around and bemoan all of the things Kim Kardashian’s Instagram feed has stolen from my life, or all of the hours I have flushed down the drain Googling my exes. I have those moments, certainly, but I spend far more time grateful for my online community and the anchor it is for me.

So why on earth have I decided to observe the National Day of Unplugging on the very day of my son’s 7th birthday party?

This party, I’m ashamed to admit (ok, not really), is going to be a total circus. There will be a DJ and a face painter and airplanes flying overhead. Trust me, I’m dying to show you the adorable pictures…so you can all criticize my extravagant party-throwing behind my back. I learned my ethos from my mother, who also waited many, many years for children and went nuts celebrating when we finally arrived. She once threw me a luau with singing gorillas and hula dancers leading a conga line and an actual pig roasting on a spit- it was AWESOME.

But you’ll just have to trust me that it’s going to be super decadent, because there will be no ‘gramming, no fb’ing, no receiving the thirty texts with requests for directions everyone could very well look up on their own.

There will even be no skyping of grandparents for 24 whole hours. I’m pretty sure everyone will survive.

Okay, there might be one aunt there with a camera. I’m not crazy. I’m just curious.

I’m curious to see what it will be like if I’m not reserving a portion of my awareness for judging my experience as I imagine others will- on my blog, on social media, on all these platforms that have been so enriching for my life but have nonetheless certainly altered how I experience it. I’m curious to know what will happen if I don’t have this escape hatch of connectivity every time things get the slightest bit boring or uncomfortable. I’m curious to know what will happen if, when my son starts being epically annoying, I lean in to that discomfort rather than relying on the outlet of some snarky tweet and the balm of inevitable supportive responses. I’m curious to know what happens to our connection if I don’t make him repeat his every feat of adorableness for me and my beloved camera.

I’m unplugging on the 7th because I believe it’s important to alter the habitual patterns of our days in order to remain conscious of our lives and present for our relationships. Pancakes for dinner are infinitely more delicious than they are at the same ol’ Sunday brunch. This blessed, infuriating, confusing, beautiful life of mine — I want to know it from every angle. On the 7th I will know it exclusively from the unplugged inside.

It’s going to drive me crazy. I can’t wait to see what happens.

I’ll let you know what happened. On the 8th.

The National Day of Unplugging is one day a year that encourages people to be mindful of the impact of their use of digital devices throughout the year. Find out more at http://www.nationaldayofunplugging.com/