Badly Until Recently

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

Not only did I become addicted to my phone and stupid games that cost me too much money, so did my hubby.

We’re in our 60s and if you’d told us that something so pointless could happen we would have laughed at you. I’m now breaking the habit.

To say I’m disappointed in myself would be the understatement of both the centuries I’ve lived in. It is and will always be a complete waste of time.

Life is about living in reality, not living through a glass screen. Connecting on social media is not turning up and being there. Okay you can’t do that from a distance, but you can call.

We could probably walk past 90% of our social media ‘friends’ in the street and not recognise them.

Don’t get me wrong though, I have a great deal of time for my social media connections that I connect with, many are people I’ve met which is why I joined in the first place. I trained with people from all over the country and a few from as far away as Canada. I taught in Sweden.

It doesn’t alter the fact though that for a society to be caring we need a sense of each other as human, as in fallible and just like me except different.

One of my major concerns about the use of tech is this separation. I was lucky to move from a mainly white area in the UK to the Birmingham area where I actually met Muslims and Sikhs, as well as people of other races. It’s been a privilege.

A privilege I note when I watch the news. Muslims associated with terrorism. White people associated with racism. Black people unfairly associated with knife crime. Over 60% of knives crime in the UK is committed by white people. I don’t need to go on, we all know that the news is skewed. I’m obviously talking generally here, not about what we feel, certainly not about what’s real (except the knife crime), but about the images drip fed to us.

What we see is important because it creates a belief system. Getting to know each other changes that. To truly know a person you must stand beside them, talk to them, see them at their best and worst, understand their why and what it feels like to be them.

We are creatures of energy. If you have a sixth sense about others the moment you see them you will know that the energetic connection hits first. If you’re a good judge of character from the get go, you are feeling who that person is.

Always wait for confirmation though, you could meet someone on a bad day, learning to feel energy shifts is really interesting. “Oh I thought I hated you, turns out I don’t, different day different person”.

So, between the phone and the computer several years of my life have been spent staring. I’m now using both mainly to write, and only allowing myself a quick coffee break game. I still don’t know many people, and I genuinely feel that tech is at the bottom of that. Plus Covid seems to have sent many of us indoors and we haven’t come out again. Thus strengthening the tech stranglehold.

So there it is. Me – tech – ongoing battle to retrieve my love of books and puzzles. 🤣

I’m doing well.

Best love

Amorah – Deb