"Life" Is Just Piling Up In My Inbox

So I have been planning since Sunday to go see a GREAT local band "The Menu's" tonight at a concert venue about a block away from my apartment. It's also my parents anniversary tonight (yay them... umm 30+ years, I don't know the exact figure) which was reason for them to come into town for the concert as well.

We went last year and had a wonderful time. You know, it's funny that as you get older the more fun you have with your parents. Or at least I do. So anyway, about the rain.

My clams are steamed. Yes. I'm angry at mother nature. She always seems to get in the way.

As I'm typing this, I can see out the window. The sky is clearing only (because I checked the forecast) to bring more intense storms and rain. BOOOOO. I usually don't mind the rain, but when it literally makes my plans go down the drain, it is a bother.

But on another note - it was raining about a week or two ago, and Brett was driving and I saw a rainbow! I have a picture of it on my phone, but I don't have a connecting cable for the computer. Whoops. Maybe I'll email the picture to myself. Oh technology.

That brings me to another topic - gadgets and technology. Now let me start off by saying, I loveee this stuff. I get super excited about new gadgets. I get jealous of others who can afford to buy them right away. :o( But recently I've been pretty anti-technology. Here are my recent peeves:

1. PHONES - ok if you have read my blog before you know that I'm not the biggest fan of cell phones for teens as it makes them have this weird thing called "I don't know how to call people, so I'll text instead" syndrome. Yea. I'm all for texting if you are somewhere where you can't talk - like at work, in a noisy bar, in your apartment where you don't want people overhearing your convo, etc. But not when you are walking, driving, having a conversation with someone else, at the mall, on you bike, in church, at a restaurant (unless it's like Wendy's or something), plus more. You get my drift.
   But it's not just texting that angers me currently. It's all the things phone do that make us forget to actually interact with one another. Now I have a pretty good phone now with lots of capabilities, but before that I had 1 phone that lasted 4.5 years (and could have gone longer but I got jealous of those fancy phones and wanted one, so I caved in and bought a new one). My first phone did these amazing things -- MADE PHONE CALLS, limited texting (my parents had purchased the 10 messages per month plan back in the day and still had it when I got a new phone), and I could change the background to a dog walking in black and white, or a race car "racing" ... more like falling... down the screen in black and white. Yes. That phone was near and dear to me. I still have it! Its not active, but you know, I'll get around to recycling it. Overall this is the first thing that has taken our generation and the one after us out of reality and into internetality. We are more awkward around other people, we can be reached basically anywhere in the world with the click of a button (although we pretend we cant be), and kids are getting cell phones at the age of 6!!!! SIX years old! I was playing in dirt then and happy doing it! What does a 6 year old need with a cell phone? You just learned the alphabet! Bah. So that is my beef with cell phones. Too fancy, make us awkward, and take away childhood.
2. EMAIL - I love email. Don't get me wrong. I'm that girl with a computer a work, 2 laptops at home, and an email enabled phone. But in the past few years, with the help of the above technology and the fact that everyone on earth has a computer now. I enjoy email because it's a quick way to talk to a LOT of people. It can be fun! But in the past few years, I haven't enjoyed it so much. It has turned into a form of instant messengar. I love the speed of email, but I'm not always on it. But that doesn't matter. People assume you are on your email 100% of the time, because people own crack-berrys, iPhones, mini laptops and everywhere offers free wi-fi. So if you don't respond to someone within the hour, or even half hour, they get offended and start questioning your loyalty. JUST CALM DOWN. Is what I have to say. Speed is well and good and it's a nice luxury, but I really just want to say sometimes - Slow Down. Sometimes we spend so much time online, email, texting, IMing, twittering, blogging, commenting, rating, etc that we forget to live our life. Time just ticks on by with us infront of a computer screen. It's really been bothering me lately as I've wanted to go out, do things, ride my bike, take a walk, watch the ducks, visit friends and just be outdoors. But then I get back to "reality" and I have 50 emails waiting in my inbox, all marked urgent! and I just throw up my hands in despair. Usually I just put it aside to delete them later. I thought I was out living my life, only to realize that "life" has just been piling up in my inbox.

Conclusion: I decided to stop writing this post and go walk around. I have more gripes about technology, but today I'm choosing to get over it, go enjoy today, and hope that you will do the same.

Enjoy using the techno gadgets for keeping in touch, but don't let them take over what is real.