Being a human

Technology never ceases to amaze me. One click of a button and you could be staring at a live video of somebody in a different timezone, in a completely different part of the world. In just a few minutes you could make a plan with 6 of your friends; organise a time, place and date whilst all of you are sitting in different houses doing different things. You could suddenly remember you forgot to buy a present for someone you are due to meet the following evening and Amazon will save the day by delivering a gift the very next morning. You get the idea.

Recently I was feeling a bit low and I just wanted to shut myself out from my phone, the internet, my 'cyber life'. It was only when I found myself asking the question 'what am I going to do instead?' that I realised how crazy the world is. I forget that there is a whole life away from my phone and away from my computer. It suddenly dawned on me how much time I spend watching other people live their lives; whether it's watching YouTube Vloggers or refreshing my Instagram and Facebook newsfeeds. I wonder how many hours of my life I've wasted doing just that, when I could be doing something far more valuable with my time? Like focusing on self development; learning new skills, looking after myself, getting more organised. I think we live in an age where the majority of people we know have some sort of social anxiety, lack of confidence and mild depression and I would say we have technology and social media to blame for that, or at least the amount of time we allow ourselves to spend using them.

I'm not saying I'm going to join a cult, practice a new religion and stop using electrical devices altogether, but I think this realisation has made me more aware of how valuable time is and how important it is to step away from my phone from time to time.

Technology is so advanced and we depend on it. We live from it, we work from it, we have a whole life story of photos somewhere in the cloud and I think we need to remind ourselves occasionally that we are humans. We are not robots. So after I've written this blog post I'm going to continue doing what I have done for the past 4 days and put down my phone, pick up a book, make myself a cup of tea and enjoy not worrying about emails, Instagram and Facebook feeds or who's talking to me on WhatsApp and have a well deserved relaxed evening.

Mel x