"Now slide your body forward from downward dog to plank. Breathe."
I slide my body forward from downward dog to plank, and breathe. I love doing yoga from a DVD. My schedule, my rules, and I can cheat if I want to.
Breathe. Mmm. Gettin' me some biceps.
*PIIIING*
Dang. Who is it? Yeah, I have to answer her back. Finishing stupid plank. Pause DVD. Quickly text back. Play. Alrighty, now into forward fold.
*PIIIING*
Oh, bite me. I'm in forward fold now, you'll have to wait. But remember, Lea, to text her back. Remember remember remember. Now my whole cleared-mind-meditative thing is shot. Blaaaaaah. Pause. Text. Play.
*PIIIING*
Blargle!
That's why I hate the phone. Just when I'm enjoying myself, or not even enjoying myself doing yoga, it interrupts me, jarring my groove, man. Not cool.
Nick Bilton complains about technologies intrusions on vacation in "How to Vacation Like It's 1999."
The second you land, you check your cellphone and are greeted by a flood of messages. After an hour sitting in your hotel room replying to work emails, you finally go to the beach.
You pull out your iPad to read a book and, oh, look: You have a message on Facebook, not to mention WhatsApp, Snapchat and Twitter.
And because the beach is so beautiful, it’s probably a good idea to take an Instagram. After a hundred attempts to capture the best and most original photo of a beach ever taken, you spend another hour seeing how many “likes” your photo got.
More messages come in. You end up getting stressed about all the work emails you have to respond to back at the hotel.
Luckily, he has remedies, like airplane mode, which allows access to camera and books but no internet. Oh, and those so-called "emergencies" from work? Most of the time they aren't "emergencies"; the office is just calling you because they can.
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Bilton concludes:
But I don’t think people should wait until vacation to unplug.
In recent months, I’ve started deleting some social media apps from my phone on weekends. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are removed entirely on Friday afternoons. On Monday morning, I reinstall everything for the workweek ahead.
If you still can’t stop yourself from logging on and checking in after all this, I have only one piece of advice left. Dunk your devices in water and replace them with an old yellow Sony Discman.
Sounds good to me.
2 comments:
I am a barbarian. I try to avoid giving out my phone number (most of the calls I get a dodgy claims of 'lottery wins' or potential payouts for accidents I haven't had). I'm not on FB, Twitter or Instagram. I don't even know what snapchat is. I technically still have a blog, but rarely use it; I regard it as virtually dead.
Of course, I still use internet too much. I want to get away from the blogs and websites and take more control of my own life. Not waste so much time (your blog excepted, of course, and those of a couple of other friends!).
Btw, how does one cheat at yoga?
One doesn't hold the poses as rigorously as one should. ;)
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