A typical day that begins with checking the weather forecast on iphone to friends' mood swings on facebook to updated news on twitter and those multiple inboxes and then to repeat the series every hour or so – this digital age does keep me informed no matter how mindless these unfettered browsing might sound at times. I do love the internet – feels like I am connected to the world at large and while I may be a miniscule part of it, I love being a part of it; love that it keeps me informed, in touch and love the fact that everyday I do learn something new. Yet, I wonder if this orgy of digital routine is turning into a growing addiction and that I am actually idling away my time in trivial pursuits. So yesterday, I took the day-off off the internet and leapt into the offline world. This meant no online applications on the phone, no gmail, no twitter, no facebook, no blogs, no TV. The computer was only limited to work-related emails (aka outlook) which could not be forsaken in this economy and to make it easier on A, I did owe him two calls – one when I reached work and the other when I was leaving from work as an assurance that my water had not broken yet.
Considering this offline experience was for but a few hours only (one day ain’t much of cleansing the digital delight), in all honesty, the hour clock seemed to be stuck for long. I mean, I wondered what exactly I would do at work – like the times when you switch betweenvideos windows or those few minutes when I check on tweets while some hideous sized files simply take their own time to open. Instead, not being able to do so gave me a bit of an opportunity to be proactive and also be able to delegate work hours without dawdling.
The day, after all did go by in some mindful activities, a positive feeling towards the end that it did belong to things I wanted to do rather than being slipped into the mundane mechanics of the digital world I so love to be a part of. I also realized that more often than not, with this monotonous browsing I got a lot of information on a variety of things, people, places and still, its meaning was lost in the midst of precision. While I missed out on reading some of the daily blogs, checking my daily posting of C&H and the fact that my iphone kept showing 100 odd unread mails was enticing, I was glad that I felt like leaving them alone.
In this day and age, we do have numerable tools to communicate, to stay informed and they are only multiplying by the day. It somehow breeds in us a sense that we ‘ought’ to be in constant ‘refresh’ mode that there is some urgency to it and we better get to it. But it also means taking the time out to filter the information absorbed into our brain and stocking them in its various compartments in a manner that can eventually be translated to true knowledge. Yesterday was a realization that I do need to take such recesses and that such ‘urgencies’ can wait indeed!
Will I do it again? I do not know that but what I do know is I now have the power to switch on and switch off this digital world when I want to.
Considering this offline experience was for but a few hours only (one day ain’t much of cleansing the digital delight), in all honesty, the hour clock seemed to be stuck for long. I mean, I wondered what exactly I would do at work – like the times when you switch between
The day, after all did go by in some mindful activities, a positive feeling towards the end that it did belong to things I wanted to do rather than being slipped into the mundane mechanics of the digital world I so love to be a part of. I also realized that more often than not, with this monotonous browsing I got a lot of information on a variety of things, people, places and still, its meaning was lost in the midst of precision. While I missed out on reading some of the daily blogs, checking my daily posting of C&H and the fact that my iphone kept showing 100 odd unread mails was enticing, I was glad that I felt like leaving them alone.
In this day and age, we do have numerable tools to communicate, to stay informed and they are only multiplying by the day. It somehow breeds in us a sense that we ‘ought’ to be in constant ‘refresh’ mode that there is some urgency to it and we better get to it. But it also means taking the time out to filter the information absorbed into our brain and stocking them in its various compartments in a manner that can eventually be translated to true knowledge. Yesterday was a realization that I do need to take such recesses and that such ‘urgencies’ can wait indeed!
Will I do it again? I do not know that but what I do know is I now have the power to switch on and switch off this digital world when I want to.
