Breaking Bad: Has Your Phone Replaced Your Reality?

In my heart, I don't believe every next gadget developed is what America needs. I can barely have a conversation with anyone before it's somehow interrupted by a technical difficulty related to technology. In the past, that was what they announced when a TV or radio program was interrupted. Today, it occupies every aspect of life.

Technology is essential to business and communication, yet it doesn't necessarily transmit truth about it's pitfalls, now does it? Let's face it, most technology takes more time than it saves. Just being real, who can escape the maze? I am subjected fo false guilt over being technologically challenge. I am ridiculed for being simple. I am simply not part of the crowd.

I'm tired. I don't want to be a slave to email, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, or even Google. I want to make my own decisions about what I do during the day, instead of feeling compelled to answer so I don't offend your silly "forwards" that I don't have the least interest in viewing or ready. Everything's cute, don't miss this, must read or "amazing video." I say, "not so much".

I want my life back. The one where I can push a child on a swing, knit a blanket, cook a satisying meal, or just sit outside and watch life happening. Or take a leisurely walk and think about life, what I like and what I would like to change. I like that life, and I intend to continue to stop letting everything else but my own thoughts drive me to unproductive busyness for no reason.

No, I don't have to allow technology to make a robot out of me. I choose to put a phone down for dinner, a movie, and/or conversations with people we care about. My phone is a boundary, I can choose to not answer it if I don't want to.

Some use theirs to avoid real-time conversations they don't want to have, while others to demonstrate their pre-eminence in a lonely world. It is a pseudo-connectedness, a cheap substitute, a poor replacement for real family interaction. Individually, sorry, but who's that important? We are so self-centered.

Electronic gadgets give us the virtual power to feel important by being reachable and textable at every second of the day. I turn mine off regularly to face the reality that life is made to be lived, not just recorded. Sometimes I do it for the sheer humor of making others work to maintain a relationship with me. If they don't, I know my value to them and look elsewhere.

Technology once designed to enhance is now isolating us from reality and each other in a true emotional sense. We can use and control it when we are more in a hurry than ever to go no where. Think about it just for a minute.....where are we really in such a hurry to get? We are mad in our behavior, demanding that we get more, better, and then best.

As you age, you will realize much of what you have to communicate is really not that original or important. In some cases, It also doesn't have to cost you your life or take the life of someone elses' if you are one of the incessant car texters. Now that might hurt your ego, but if it makes us think, then it was worth saying.

As for me, I am learning to LOVE the moments of silence and contemplation! I think the obvious solution is to prohibit driver texting in cars altogether. The only problem then will be what other activity will we find to do while we are driving? Shaving, putting on make-up, eating and taking pictures run a close second.

Sometimes, in my fearful moments, I think about setting a video cam up in the back window of my car just to record the faces of inattentive drivers hitting their brakes at the last minute because they weren't paying attention, thereby rearranging their entire cars' contents. Then I find myself full of tension of thinking about the impact they might have on me if they don't stop.

Here's hoping someone finds this offensive enough to comment. Sometimes, shocking us into reality is a good thing.