Monday, January 22, 2007

Unplugged

I feel very strongly about this subject - being unplugged. That's what I call not being connected to every piece of technology all the time - mostly the cell phone. My cell phone is like a little link from me to people that I need and/or want to talk to while away from my home or office. I love it. That being said, I don't love being accessible to people 24/7. I feel the need to be unreachable sometimes. And I think that's ok. I like to turn my cell phone off, turn the ringer off my home phone and just be (gasp!) disconnected sometimes.

Similarly, I really feel that being disconnected away from home can be important also. For example, when I'm eating lunch with someone (an individual or a group, but especially an individual), I usually won't answer my cell phone. I'm there at that time to spend time with whoever I'm with. The person on the phone is not with me at the time and is therefore secondary to me at the time (barring the rare emergency). That's just the way I feel about it. The same goes for being in a check-out line, ordering at a restaurant and countless other situations where I believe that the place you are in and the thing you are doing should be more important than the person trying to reach you. It's not like you can't return the call in a matter of minutes...if you want to.

I'm down off my soapbox for now.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I feel the same way. I usually don't answer my call waiting unless I am really waiting for an important call. Why ask the person I am talking with to hold on? If it's important the other person will call back later. At the same time, it's good to know that I CAN be reached in an emergency. If it kept beeping over and over, I'd flip over to see what was going on. With my cell, my main purpose for having it is so I can call someone if I need help. Or so the babysitter can reach me if there's a problem. It's a good thing to have, but people way over-use them.
Sure it comes in handy, like Saturday, when I was out shopping and needed Cody to measure our oven at home so I could know if the baking pan I was about to buy would actually fit (we have the smallest oven in the world.) But I could live without it. And the pan DID fit, thankfully. It's from Williams Sonoma and super nice. I've never been so excited about a cookie sheet in my life.

Heather said...

AMEN!!!

Lindsay said...

I agree with also. I am guilty of some of your examples but I don't always agree with myself. :) The cell phone is a wonderful invention but like anything else people just need to learn how to balance it all - including myself.

gayle said...

I am in complete agreement.

If you are even 1% available to everyone else, all of the time, you can't be 100% in the present moment.

It's like 1% of you always wants to be somewhere other than where you are.

I do the same thing.

Well said, Rachel!