And So Begins My Hiatus From Technology

On 02.16.10, In God and Christianity, My Life, By Alexander

I am surrounded by distractions.  Every day, from morning to night, my life involves a computer, a “smart” device, or some other gizmo that is destined to make my life easier.  At work, this is inevitable – I work with and on computers as a way to make a living – i cannot avoid that, at least not right now.  However, in the morning, the first thing I do is check news and technology updates via various services on my iPhone.  When I get home in the evenings, instead of doing something – anything – else, I almost immediately begin streaming movies or TV shows over Netflix “because it’s something to do,” and simply because it’s there.  I have music playing or a TV show running whenever I am doing almost anything else – including writing the first part of this document.  When even that is not enough, I have my iPhone on standby with an app store at my beck and call, waiting to deliver any one of a thousand games to entertain me, even for a little while, for just 99 cents.

My iPhone goes everywhere with me.  It’s my connection to the world of the internet, the millions of people, places, news sources, cool new things, and every other little distraction in my life.  XKCD, Wikipedia (that one’s a doozy), failblog, Facebook and twitter – which i update sporadically, admittedly, but they are massively distracting nonetheless – the ability to know what’s going on in friends’ lives in 140 character snippets is surprisingly attractive.

I lose touch.  The distractions are a growing cancer on my soul – pulling my focus to the world and it’s interactions, and away from where it should be – on God.  Now that’s not to say that I am against the world, and the things it has to offer – I believe that much is good, so long as it is taken in moderation, but the old adage stands true – “too much of a good thing…”  Let’s just say that with the more toys we have, the more likely we are to worship them, and the knowledge, entertainment, distraction, or whatever other aspect that they bring to our lives instead of our Father.

That said, I’m going to try an experiment.  Something that I have never done before, something that isn’t a new idea, at all, but new to me.  I’m going to see how much I am missing due to these parasites stealing my attention from where it belongs.  I am going to sever myself from my interface with the world, at least when I am not at work.  Starting tomorrow, Wednesday, February the 17th, 2010 at 0900hrs, and ending Wednesday, February the 24th, 2010 at 0900hrs I will no longer be involving myself with communications devices and methods outside of my normal work hours – and will be using said devices only for work during those same hours.

I will be disabling email from reaching my phone – at all – for the next week, and will be using parental controls to block access to the web and the apps on my phone.  My phone will be, for the first time in 2 years, just a phone (albeit with a very expensive dataplan).  Twitteriffic will be disabled, and Facebook will be unavailable.  If anyone needs to reach me after 6PM, it would be in your best interest to call me, as I will not be checking mails.  My xBox will be dismantled, the harddrive stored in a separate location, so that i cannot get my instant fix of Netflix.  I do have a computer set up at home with the basics – Cyberduck, Textwrangler, and Safari, so that, in the event an emergency does crop up I will be able to do something about it.

I will have my camera and my voice recorder, and I will still have a phone with which I could attempt to become a lot more social again.  I won’t be getting “news” from people’s status updates, and if i want to know what’s going on with them, I’m going to have to make an effort.

So, here’s to a week of living distraction free, with the time to focus on the things that truly matter in life.  I pray that it leads me in the right direction, and that I realize what all is going on around me, that I have allowed to pass me by for so long, and that I am properly putting myself into a position to become stronger in my walk with Christ.

And if anyone wants to grab a beer, hang out, or just talk, I’m definitely up for it =]

~/A\V/

Postscript: There will be one final twitter/FB post announcing this to everyone, so that they know that I’m not actively ignoring them, around 0830hrs tomorrow morning.

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“That’s it. I’m done with bad for now, right?”

On 01.18.10, In God and Christianity, On the World, By Alexander

Yesterday I made a Twitter/FB post that said “First Melanoma. Then bad sick. Then dead battery. Now flat tire. That’s it, I’m done with bad for now, right?”

Soon after I retracted it with a statement that I realized that, basically, what I have to deal with is miniscule compared to what the majority of the world has to deal with. That said, I now begin a (hopefully) short rant on the subject. Most of this stems from one passage in an article about cruise lines stopping at Labadee (near Haiti) that Neal Boortz (@Talkmaster) posted on Twitter today. The rest just comes from the opulence that I witness on a daily basis.

The delightful passage is this ‘”It was hard enough to sit and eat a picnic lunch at Labadee before the quake, knowing how many Haitians were starving,” said another [passenger on the Cruise Critic internet forum]. “I can’t imagine having to choke down a burger there now.”‘

What I can’t see, is myself ever thinking like this individual. I pray that I never think like this individual. Many people would look at this and think “What’s the big deal? That guy is just showing his compassion for the situation! He’s just showing that he cares!” I disagree with this line of thought – I believe that this individual is showing his guilt. Not guilt for having done anything wrong – he hasn’t – but he already has established that he has enjoyed a burger on this beach while Haitians starved less than 10 miles away, and this has clearly bothered him in the past. Yet, it’s apparent, he doesn’t allow himself to think that this is truly wrong until said starving Haitians were stricken by a disaster of such incredible, unbelievable magnitude that hundreds of thousands of human beings lie rotting in the sun, the stench permeating everywhere, mothers and fathers grief stricken as they search with bloodied hands for the bodies of their children, hoping against hope that they might be alive.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the attitude that I have seen of the majority of the “civilized” nations of the world. We are so caught up in everything that we have that we fail to realize that we have so much more than 90% of the world will ever even see.

I realized today that I am so wealthy that it defies logic. Yes, I had melanoma, but I have the best healthcare system in the world to cure me of it – which it did. Had I been in a different place, I would most likely still have a cancerous tumor that would be slowly leeching destructive cells into my lymph nodes, waiting to die a slow and painful death to advanced lymphoma. Yes, I was sick – pretty badly sick as well – i had a temperature of 103 before i broke my thermometer in a hallucinogenic rage from the fever – but I had readily available and cheap over the counter medicines that combatted the fever and allowed me to function for the remainder of the weekend. I even got a new thermometer for just under ten bucks.

As far as the battery and the tire go – I can’t even bring myself to reconcile why I thought that these were such bad things – I have a car and a fairly reliable traffic system on which to use it – where most people in this world don’t even have an ass to pull a cart with. I have so much that it is unbelievable that I would ever think that I am suffering, yet, I do. My first look is to see the bad in a given situation, instead of realizing that I am so incredibly blessed to be in the apparently bad situation in the first place.

Now, I am in no way saying that everything negative is simply “deserved” or “justified.” No, I’m simply stating that the next time that you spill your coffee on your $200 suit and the seat of your Lexus or get stuck behind the school bus when you are already late to work, give pause and realize that you are incredibly fortunate to have your $5 latte, your luxury car and your job in the city, when there are people who would do just about anything to be able to earn just that five bucks a week. We may be one of the richest nations in the world, but when we do not reach out to the rest of the people out there, we are no better than the dictators that oppress, the tyrants that destroy, and the zealots that kill for nothing more than a sideways glance or a raised foot. I pray that I will not allow myself to become so caught up in my own “suffering” again that I fail to remember that there are others out there that truly know what suffering is, and that I will be led to know how it is that I am to reach them myself, with the wealth that I have been given.

My idea of suffering is a pittance to what the majority of the world goes through, and I could have five thousand more events occur of similar magnitude to what I have experienced recently and still have not scratched the surface of what true suffering is. I’ve realized, even if I’m left with the sun above and the ground beneath my feet, I’ve been given more than I can even imagine – God has provided me with so much that it is sickening to me to think that I should be “left alone” and not have to “suffer” anymore.

~/A\V/

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