The view through multiple windows

              I am up at 6 O'clock in the morning, time to get up and ready myself for work. First things first, I pick up my phone, I see there are a number of notifications to respond to, but at the moment it is the weather outside that concerns me. I open the weather app, 3 degrees Fahrenheit, real feel -15. It is to be expected, its about mid February in Minnesota. I lay down the phone, walk into the bathroom. A quick brush of the teeth, then hop in to the shower for a quick 10 mins hot wash. I reemerge in my room and get dressed for work. I have twenty minutes before I set out. I go upstairs into the living room and turn on the TV. The morning's coverage of the news carries the usual political rants, end of the world crisis stories and a dash of celebrity gossip. I hop onto my laptop and access my personal email. I quickly reply to one query and read the response of another and proceed to delete several other less important emails (ads, promotional offers and the like). I then prepare my bagged lunch for the day,
              I am almost ready to set out, but first I let the dog out to potty. The air outside is as reported by the weather app, frigid, but surprisingly not as daunting as I had imagined earlier. There is a bit of cloud cover, with opens here and there to allow slits of sun rays through. I wave hello to my neighbor, who is setting off for work. A school bus full of cheery school children drives by, on their way to a day of discoveries. I walk back into the house and pause a minute, staring through the screen door. I have a smile on my face, it just dawned on me that I had created a vision of the world around me minutes ago from all the different sources and tiny digital windows that I had peered into, and that world seemed a lot more haunting than the one I had just walked into a moment ago. Reassured, I quickly get the rest of my things together and with my scarf tightly wrapped around my neck, I walked through the screened door and into the world.