Connectivity

I think it's a well known fact that I am completely rubbish at replying promptly on whatsapp.

I think if you've talked to me long enough, you'd realise that sometimes I don't reply for days. And sometimes not at all, usually because your conversation has been buried under another host of conversations I have yet to reply to. Often I have to give my sheepish grin-of-shame and admit that I don't have 3G and can't read many whatsapps till I get home in the evening, by which time I am too tired to reply to all of them.

The thing is, I really like not being accessible all the time.

Blogger Joanna Goddard wrote this:

"The other day, Toby and I went on a bike ride to the playground, and I accidentally left my phone at home. While he was playing, I was surprised to see how many times I absentmindedly reached for it before realizing it wasn't in my pocket. It made me realize how much I check it—for really no reason other than habit. (It was the same phenomenon as when you forget to wear your watch and then realize how many times you look at your blank wrist.)"

I would hate to be reliant on my phone for habit. As it is, I know so many people who are reliant on their phones for excitement, and for comfort. Sometimes I'll be talking to someone, and then in a conversation lull, when I want to enjoy a shared silence, suddenly a phone comes out - and I feel like the air is filled with angry static of an intruder in the conversation and also a silent accusation 'You have lost my interest'.

Certainly, I enjoy coming home from a long day and lying on the sofa for 15 minutes straight of reading whatsapp conversations and checking instagram. I like seeing what people have been talking about and doing (as well as all the lovely colours and angles on instagram - I  swear some of my friends could be street photographers sometimes. and others could be comedians, with their funny old captions.) But after 15 minutes of doing that I want to be doing something better with my time, like giving my Mum a hug, or reading 'the secret life of bees' or buttering some fresh toast.

It scares me that I could be spending more than 10 years of my life staring at a silver screen. I already waste so much of this precious short time on earth sleeping (necessarily so that I can live, and also sleep is the bringer of nice dreams), and I don't want to waste too much of it experiencing life through a flat screen.

And so when I don't reply to you, or take forever, please remember I'm probably tying to live life to the fuller and the fullest, and be happy.