I spent Saturday with another couple of friends. We had dinner and went to a comedy show in L.A. Sunday, I got to spend some quality time with family.
However, I think the most underrated part of my weekend was a result of a mistake I made. I knew that I was going to be staying over my friends' apartment after the comedy show on Saturday night. However, I forgot to pack my cell phone charger. I tried to preserve the battery as best as I could but the phone died around 12:30pm on Sunday afternoon. All of Saturday night and Sunday morning I wrestled with the idea of just buying an extra battery for the phone. Alas, my pocketbook won out and I decided that I could live without my phone for a while. Not only did I survive without it, but I actually enjoyed being without it.Before I continue I want to explain myself a bit. I am not saying that this 10 hours has turned me off to technology or the interconnectedness it brings us. In fact it may have done the opposite. On Friday night my friend Gina posited that the people who aggressively reject using Twitter, Facebook or blogging are basing their stance on a misguided principle. They see technology as a way for people to communicate about the most mundane aspects of their life. Those who reject these forms of technology only see people who use our interconnectedness to live out every single aspect of their day to day lives out in the public, hoping of garner some kind of attention. To be fair, some of those folks do exist. However, in between those who wholly reject the interconnectedness that technology brings and those who view it as a way to remind us of what they had for breakfast, there is a majority of us who hope to use this technology to have conversations, spread ideas, humor, culture and ultimately learn from one another.
So after making a case for why technology is so great, why am I writing a post about how I enjoyed being disconnected from the world for 10 hours. When I got back home I began to charge my phone. After about twenty minutes I turned it on. Then came the notifications:
3 Missed Calls
New Voicemail
New Text Messages
New Personal E-mail
New Work E-mail
New Facebook Message
I was about to go to through them when I stopped myself and thought, 'I don't have to do this right now. These messages are all probably a few hours old and I didn't respond to them then yet the world didn't fall apart. These things can wait.' I realized then that just because I can be connected at all times doesn't mean I have to be connected at all times. I had effectively burned myself out. I realized that when someone sent me YouTube clip I wasn't thinking, 'awesome!'. No, Instead I was thinking, 'ugghh, why won't this person leave me alone! Now I have to watch this because I am going to go into work tomorrow and this person is going to ask if I watched the clip'.I ceased being connected and had begun feeling saturated. Everything felt like a homework assignment that I had to do right then and there. Worse than that, the homework assignments just kept coming and coming. For me personally, I had lost sight of how great the internet and technology can be. I had become overwhelmed and overburdened by them. I had become inundated with information and messages and email and the feeling that I had to respond to all this incoming information and stimulation. But after those few short hours I realized the importance of finding time to be disconnected. There is something to be said for turning of my phone, for not ehcking email, for not having a computer screen in front of me. There is something nice about being at a concert and not feeling the urge to have to look at a work email that just landed in my inbox or check a text message while I am having dinner with my brother. It was nice to disconnect. It was nice to be fully present around those I cared about and focus on the world around me and not feel as though this larger virtual world was going to interrupt me.
I love that the internet and other technologies allows me to be connected to a world that is larger and more vibrant than any other world I would have know during any other period of recorded history. Yet, this weekend reminded me that absence can make the heart grow fonder. Just because I am connected to a larger world doesn't mean that I am obligated to it. In fact, by disconnecting and focusing on my real time experiences and the smaller world around me I may be able to find something worth sharing with the rest of the world.
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