Switching Off September

So here’s the plan I mentioned here. I can’t guarantee it will add years to our lives, but then, I can’t say it won’t, either.

What if we all decided to switch off our technology at the same time? What if we all had a pact: a realistic deadline where we stopped sending emails etc.at say, 8pm? And to make it easier, we stopped looking at them at 8pm, too. The whole correspondence shebang could start again next morning, of course. We could continue using travel time to answer and send emails perhaps, but with the frisson of excitement that after say, 12 hours of frenzied activity on the networks, it would all then stop. Freeze.

Ok, I realise in this global economy that one woman’s 8pm is another man’s breakfast but we have to start somewhere, huh?

I know it’s only a dream. Some people wouldn’t like it, and it wouldn’t work if everybody didn’t sign up, I suppose. But perhaps if there was a significant groundswell, those who didn’t like the idea might, nonetheless, be open to the concept and accepting of the fact that fewer emails would be landing at night. Hey, they might even start to enjoy it, too.

Enter: Scroll Free September!

#ScrollFreeSeptember, the brainchild of the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) is about to enter its second year of encouraging people to take a month off social media, or rather, to do less of it. 

The key is to sign up to the option that is most relevant to you, and then sit back and enjoy a time rich September, musing how much calmer life would be if we could keep up this healthier relationship with our phones going forward. I’ve signed up to Night Owl, no surprise there, but have added in my own, ‘Correspondence Curfew’. In short, my Scroll Free September commitment is: Scroll and Email Free Evenings, and I can't wait.   

Day light hours? I’m going to reply to all correspondence as quickly as possible whilst employing a monumental effort not to begin my missive with being sorry for the delay. I shall respond with friendliness and professionalism but I will not, I repeat, not apologise. You see, by apologising, we’re implying we’ve done something wrong. But looking after our health, and not putting (albeit unintentional) burden on other people’s health, is a good thing and should be rejoiced. What I’m hoping is that people will lower their expectations of me.  And in turn, I will lower my expectations of them.

We’ll still love each other.

In fact, maybe we’ll love each other just a tiny bit more now we’re liberated of brain fog and showered in sleep. Will you join me? Will you endeavour to be less responsive, to keep people waiting and smile while you do it? Will you vow not to apologise for a tardy response to communication?  

Oh, this is the most rebellious I've been for a long time.

Perhaps you’re streets ahead of me on this one, already living long and uninterrupted evenings, the phone switched off way more often than it's on? If so, I'd love to hear from you. Tell me how you do it! And how it’s received?

Or maybe late night to-do list ticking is not your particular tipple, but scrolling - and in bed (please, no. Just no!) - is something you know you do but with that slightly nauseous feeling of discomfort I spoke of in my first post. There’s a place for you in Scroll Free September, too😊 More info here.

I think Scroll Free September is a wonderful concept. It focuses much of its attention on the potential benefits to young people – and I know my children are on Instagram until late at night and try as I might, they show no signs of stopping – but I think all ages are guilty of an unhealthy dependence on our phones. 

I’m not preaching. I’m guilty. I just want to live a long and healthy life and I want other people to be alive to do that with me.

Will you join me?

Attached to the Phone

It’s term time again which can only mean one thing: back to ironing on Monday and Friday mornings. I like a deadline so the deal is that I have to get it all done before 9am when I start work. It commences around 7 with brief interludes to push my children through the door and into the arms of the school bus, to load forgotten cereal bowls into the dishwasher, to put the washing on - lest I should have no clothes to iron in a few days’ time.

And to have a flit around Twitter.

I like Twitter because people can be very funny and in 140 characters they can be even funnier. It’s also where I hear about blogs and writing competitions – so I can even pretend it’s work – and where fellow tweeps share writing successes and woes which is the closest I get for hours, sometimes, to having a chat with colleagues at break. I also like to have a paddle around Facebook but we’ll leave that one there before you raise an eye at the suggestion that this may be something akin to work.

We got back from our summer holiday on the eve before school began for the new term. I love being on holiday but I also love coming home, even though it’s with a tinge of panic about getting back-to-it, that I’ve forgotten how I work and what I need to do. It’s a real life recurring dream for me. As is customary, I’d compiled my to-do list in the car as we left the airport. Who am I kidding? I’d been adding to my to-do list all holiday and this time I took out my pen to add some things that had needed doing which I’d already done and could thus be ticked off. (Some of you won’t understand this and I salute you.) The list had done the trick: no need to panic. The house was clean, only the aftermath of a seven week period of ironing on a need-only basis to contend with, the freezer was packed with food and the fresh stuff was arriving by those kind home-delivery people with their lively suggestion of substitutes just to keep life interesting.

Let’s just say, the stench which hit us as we opened the front door was not a dead animal (or family of, I’d decided, with one still limping to a better place, via the bottom of my bed), nor was it the entire contents of the ‘cycling drawer’, although we do appreciate that I have now washed every pair of gloves, neoprene socks and avoid-washing- unless-smelling-like-dead-animals shower-proof- jackets. No, after an hour of false starts, my husband was the unfortunate soul who discovered the source of the foul smell. We’d left the freezer door ajar all holiday; our rammed full freezer, boasting fish fillets after the lovely man from South Shields had paid his annual visit and persuaded me that forty packs of assorted flavours were much better value than twenty. There were a couple of blocks of stilton in there, too. 

I would like to say a public thank you here to my husband for launching into the first and by far the worst of the three all-over freezer cleans, including all the pipe work and the floor below where putrid fish juice had seeped.

And the home shopping delivery didn’t turn up.

Thankfully, if a little ironically, we’d bought fish and chips on the way home so nobody went hungry for this tale. And our milkman had delivered so we could have a cup of tea.  Lots of cups of tea. You see, there are perks to a by-gone age.

On holiday we had no Wi-Fi. Actually, we had a small allocation of Wi-Fi but my children’s Snapchatting needs, and thus desire for the holiday quota, was greater than mine. It meant that I had three weeks without the internet.

Now, I’m afraid that the freezer debacle with its laborious insurance claim and urgent need to buy fish, or the distinct absence of ironing fairies – I know, I know, I really should have done the uniform before midnight of the night before the new term – or even the time spent having a couple of coffees with people I hadn’t seen for years (ok, weeks) is not to blame for the fact that I am still chasing my tail (or should I say, ‘tale’) a week after our return. I’m afraid, dear readers, the cause is Wi-Fi, or to be precise: social media.

I’ve lamented before about the time sap that is this fairly recent phenomenon of our need to share and share again our lives, but being without social media on holiday was a different revelation this time. I had a wonderful holiday. But I actually missed my online communication.

Even though I didn’t realise it until I got home.

Partly due to my woeful hearing making phone conversation both for me and the poor person on the receiving end a little trying, but mainly due to living in a world where most people of my generation and younger are more likely to message than make a phone call, contact using the internet has become my number one way of keeping in touch. It’s a sad admission that I use any time I might have spent speaking on the phone, on-line, but other people are doing the same. Even if I wanted to go back to sitting on the stairs in the hall à la 70s, attached to a phone line via a curly wire connected to the cheese wedge on the wall, and when I was only on the phone, when I was 'on the phone', I’m not sure many other people would have the time or inclination to indulge me. 

When my Wi-Fi returned and I logged into Facebook and Twitter, read the funny little quips and personal messages, it made me smile. There is something undoubtedly reassuring about sharing online that your house stinks of rotten fish, your food delivery hasn’t turned up and you’re going to be here for the foreseeable because you couldn’t be bothered to do the ironing over the school holidays - and learning that you’re not alone. There is a certain comfort in knowing that even when you were away, you weren’t forgotten. And there’s something quite heartening about realising that a three week world without internet was fun, but only that. It wasn’t superior, just different.

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. I spend most of every day on the computer and am the most complaining and exacting of companions: how dare you crash? How dare you not allow me to ‘save’, you’re a computer, that’s what you do! Yes, I should learn how to use the new software but I don’t have time, so make it work anyway, if you wouldn’t mind. I always said I would happily ditch the computer and go back to letter writing and postcards, to queuing in the post office three days before deadlines to make sure my work reached its recipients safely, to sitting in the library with my amassed questions on post-it notes. And I probably would go back to this world, if everyone else would join me.

But the internet is here to stay and thanks to a period of abstinence, our relationship has deepened a little. I’m off to joyfully post this on-line, appreciating the seconds it will take to do it, whilst repeating the mantra that I will not complain about technology, that I will not have unrealistic expectations, that I will happily use social media but ONLY when I’m not working.

I have just removed my mobile phone to the hall.

How about you? Are you a technology lover or a fighter? And how do you manage your time?

Ever wish you could rewind?

I had a funny day yesterday – funny as in ‘fun’ and funny as in excruciatingly embarrassing.  Let me set the scene. 

Children dispatched to friends, water bottle in holder, sat nav installed, engine on and I smile to myself.  It’s 7am and I’m on the road for my 11am meeting in Leamington Spa, 138 miles south of here and, according to Sat Nav and AA route planner, a two hour, thirty minute journey. 

I am not going to be late. 

In my bag I have a list of emails needing a response and my hard backed notebook, which is always to hand,  just in case I should have one hour 35 minutes to spare in which to write while I wait for a meeting for which I’m ridiculously early.  (For the pedants amongst you, I know we should be talking one hour 30 minutes but who doesn’t play beat the Sat Nav and who doesn’t come out on top by a good five minutes?)

I am not very good at ‘on time’.  I can do late (oh yes) and I can do early if it’s as important as this meeting is.  I’m the person who gets to the airport four hours prior to check-in and has to wait with the cleaners for it to open – ‘Why?’ my ever patient husband asks when he spends the rest of his life trying to pretend he doesn’t mind that yet again, he’s missing half an hour of his evening waiting for me.  ‘Because you just never know,’ I answer, visions of the motorway tarmac melting and curling below our wheels as a blatant attempt to sabotage our trip.  Mind you, we did once miss our flight by a whole day when I realised that the ten year passports we had for our six and five year old children were actually five year passports, like all children’s (does everyone except me know this?) and when I cried in the passport office the clerk simply handed me a tissue with a, ‘ hey up, another weeper, wipe your tears up after you go would you love,’ and the instruction to come back in the morning.

Some people will know that I do like to extend a journey by an average of 50% by travelling in completely the wrong direction whilst engrossed in Chris Evans on the radio or someone of that ilk.    I have a turbulent relationship with Sat Nav, granted it would help if I could totally trust it rather than mouthing, ‘oh don’t be so ridiculous’ when it demands I take a right turn. My most famous example of Sat Nav rage was when it took me to an isolated part of the A1, just South of Scotch Corner, equidistant between junctions and told me I’d reached my destination of a race course in Thirsk (in reality twenty miles away) for a race starting in twenty minutes.  ‘Oh no it isn’t my destination,’ I cried, not quite so politely, only narrowly missing throwing the Sat Nav out of the window as I remembered it didn’t actually belong to me. 

So yesterday, I had a thorough print out of directions and a stern resolve to listen to the Irish lilt which gave the Sat Nav commands.  Leaving at 7, I knew I would miss the traffic around Leeds and sail down the motorway, looking forward to my first team meeting in three years, happy to have ventured out of my little office for once.

It’s raining. Proper rain.  The rain that forces you to drive at 50 rather then 70mph down the motorway.  Quick calculation and I reassure myself that even if this continues for the whole trip, I will still arrive with over an hour to spare.  I turn up the radio.

'Severe queues on the M1,' Sally Traffic says, 'between junctions 27 and 28.'  Typical! I think, but oh well, it’s only a couple of junctions and I’ve got at least an hour in the bag.  Oh dear.  The rest of the journey I will let you imagine, but suffice it to say, I arrived half an hour late for the meeting after a couple of frantic messages to Dave who was, as ever, very cool about it but told a colleague that I’d arrive completely flustered and guilt-ridden. 

What he hadn’t reckoned with, was the next bit.

I fly through the door of the health club, past the lady at reception who, with one look at me, clearly needing no introduction, announces that ‘they’re waiting for you’ and its right, first left.  Right first left.  Two bags on one shoulder, wet (frizzy) hair, I  breeze through the first double doors, clock the notice above the meeting room: yep, Leamington Spa it’s called, (clever) and force open the very narrow, left of two doors armed with my apologies for stalling the meeting.  Except I don’t force open the left of the doors because it won’t open, or rather, it won’t open any further than the head’s width I’ve already managed - just enough for me to say, ‘Oh, what’s happened? Why can’t I get in?’ (Or words to that effect, I can’t actually remember in my acute mortification exactly what came out.) 

The door is open enough for me to see Dave, standing there, mid presentation and the other eight people, only two of whom I’ve met before, all in a kind of freeze frame, like those sets you get at the theatre where everyone’s mid pose while the attention is all on one person: me.  I try to force open this exceedingly narrow door, thinking (I can only suppose) that as I’m quite small, I might be able to push myself through the six inch gap.  However, with my diminished height, does not come the force of ten men and consequently the door was not, I repeat, not, going to open any further.  Dave, bless him, after what was probably a few seconds but clearly ten minutes of my life, rushes to the adjacent, normal adult size door and opens it for me.  He bustles me into the room to a round of applause from the awaiting team members, bemused and amused by my attempts to enter the room through what I can only imagine is a fire escape for visiting pets (very strong, visiting pets).

Fiercely sympathising with my chagrin, Carol hands me a strong coffee.  I force myself to focus on the rest of Dave’s presentation, the meeting starts to take on a more normal course.  Mobile switched to mute, I start to take notes.  The meeting’s really informative, I understand my role, am impressed with my new colleagues, the doorway incident has been filed to that part of my brain for later retrieval over a glass of wine.

Somebody’s phone is going off.  Tut tut, I think.  I have varying deafness in both ears.  One of the problems it brings it that I can’t place sound very well.  Tut tut, I think again, why don’t they turn it off?  Apart from the fact I can’t tell whether the sound is close to me, the ring tone is also entirely different to mine.  Still it rings.  The thought did cross my mind that my children may have changed my ring tone without my knowledge, as has been done in the past, much to their great hilarity, but my phone is on mute, isn’t it? 

Well, the phone was indeed on mute but somehow, because the powers that be had picked me out for their day’s entertainment, the timer I never knew existed, had switched itself on, counted down and was now alerting me to the fact that allotted time had been spent.  I still don’t know how that could work if the ringer has been switched to off.   But what does it matter?  All I know is, in the middle of Tom’s presentation, and to everyone’s great relief, I was forced to retrieve my phone, fumble about with a few buttons and somehow silence it - with a silent prayer that I’d done enough to stop it happening again.

Sigh.

Well, that was my funny day.  You may, like me, be concerned to know that I haven’t actually signed the contract for this work yet...