For the whole of this weekend, I turned my phone off. Not because it was bothering me, not because I was doing something important, but simply because I wanted to – and the world became a much quieter place.
I became fascinated by the silence that filled the gaps between us talking as a family, almost as if I didn’t want to spoil them. They became essential to me, they spoke to me, and I could feel what the silences were there to convey by just listening to them.
For the first 30 years of my life, I thought I was different from everyone else. I felt that my shifts in mood and outlook on life were abnormal and no one else felt like I did. I seemed strange to me that my happiness and motivation through the daily grind of life was more like a rollercoaster than it really should be. Wasn’t until the last few years that I learnt that everyone is the same, and these changes are what makes life so fulfilling.
I’ve had this post in my drafts for a long time because from both an internal and an external perspective it is something that bothers me tremendously. I have rewritten it so many times to try and avoid the negativity, and I hope this comes across in the right way.
More than a few times in my life I have fallen foul of letting my ego get the better of me, this hasn’t been lately but indeed is something I catch myself doing.
You might be wondering this, or you may not care (or even noticed) but I have been very absent from my usual haunts recently. This is partly by choice, and partly due to other reasons. I am, well I think I was, burnt out – but during my break away I have realised that the things I thought were important to me as a person, actually are not.
I came to a huge realisation.
When the rumours first started hinting at Apple working on a smartwatch, I was already sold. My wrist had already had an Android wear watch strapped to it, but since my switch to Apple products, my pebble watch although great wasn’t cutting it. Now four years later, it is the single bit of hardware that keeps me using an iPhone – but man is it ugly.
You see I have a bit of a thing for watches, in fact before smartwatches became a real option I had around 15 different ones in my possession, but the Apple Watch ruined all my style, due to its notification and health monitoring.
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but I use a lot of Apple products. I understand this might come as a shock, but quite a few years ago I decided it was the best option for me to lean in and get the benefits of living solely in the Apple garden. I’ve dipped my toe in and used several other devices, but for the most part, it hasn’t been worthwhile.
Not in that way! I’ve never been happy with the way my blog performs, or looks, and unfortunately I spend too much time tweaking things and even creating completely new ones! This is time I should be spending doing other things, or you know, actually writing things to publish on my blog.
So the time has come to make something and stick to it, I’m currently debating over a few different options – and I’ve managed to narrow it down to three options.
I often day dream about the perfect future of pretty basic products. This often leads to some strange outcomes and random doodles but lately I have been thinking through the future of targeted advertising and I’m a little worried.
Don’t get me wrong my ideal future for being tracked around the internet, and also real life, is for it to be killed off. However there is clearly a future for them, so what is the logical best product they could produce.
One of the most difficult urges I struggle to let go of is my desire for stuff. To buy things just because I can, and upgrade to the latest and greatest simply because it was released. Thankful this pang is getting less and less, but there is an over arching trend of commercialism to push the latest update onto people and cause many of them to over extended their budgets to make this purchase.
For many years there were apparent differences between the technology we bought. Clear divides between what companies were and were not able to produce, the laptop market was still as it is now, but in mobile some phones sucked, and other prevailed. A tech world was a sea of constant compromises as brands valued different things in their TVs, computers and even headphones.
Now, more than ever, everything is the same.