Slow Down

It has been an extraordinarily busy few days which explains my lack of new writing for nearly a whole week.

That is my longest absence ever during my 8 years of blogging.

I thought that I would miss the experience but to be honest I have enjoyed the short break.

It tied in nicely although coincidentally with a radio feature on what is called "The Slow Movement".
This is where participants choose to ease back on their usage of social media and technology in their everyday lives.

The reasons for this are diverse from trying to relieve stress, wrestle free of the poisoning influence of the likes of Twitter and Facebook and just take a moment to rediscover a bit of peace, calm and self awareness away from such all pervading aspects of what we have readily accepted as important or indeed essential to our modern work/life/family balance or rather imbalance.

Granted, my slow phase was prompted by the almost simultaneous failure of my faithful laptop and then my smart phone. This initially invoked in me a feeling of helplessness and deep down panic.

I rely heavily on the two bits of tech in my day to day work and their sudden fatal malfunctions threw me right off my stride and concentration. Upon the demise of my phone and to the dismay of my family I simply went to bed. It was 9.30pm, just about dusk in mid August in this North of England city.

If you think about it my reaction to being deprived of tech was perfectly natural.

Our ancestors in the past worked on the basis of getting up at dawn and toiling through to when it got dark when they retired to their beds.

I am now firmly of the opinion that all of the electronic stimulus from TV and the Internet just keeps us up and artificially active.

I was also quite exhausted from organising the appropriately skilled and savvy persons to revive my laptop and to work out what to do to procure a replacement phone. The former was quite straightforward as the company who look after our business computers were happy to investigate the problem and come up with a solution. The latter filled me with dread as it would anyone who has walked past a High Street or Shopping Centre Sales Outlet of the giant mobile phone companies and seen the brash layout, bright displays and keen staff. It is almost beyond human endurance to hope to avoid eye contact and being drawn into that world of strange terminology and contract confusion.

As it was it helped that I knew what I wanted at the EE Shop which was the exact same phone that had given up on functioning. I had allowed for at least an hour for the purposes of replacing my phone but as it was I was in and out in half of that time clutching a small and perfectly formed white box.

Without the means of checking my phone or accessing the internet through my laptop I rediscovered the joy of picking up and reading a good book. If I needed a fact checking I did it manually in an encyclopedia- the old school way. A drama or documentary feature on the radio re-awakened my imagination and minds-eye. Going to bed so unnaturally early gave me a good 9 hours sleep which I don't think I have achieved since childhood.

Thanks to my enforced slowdown I did get a tantalising glimpse of what it is to be back in control of my thoughts, timescale and life. It was pretty good.