This topic was very likely to have been chosen after reading this WhatsApp forward.
.
My tryst with unplugging started in the good old days of car batteries overcharging and being advised to unplug the battery from the alternator. I did not connect to the modern usage of the term as defined below.
This is a different ballgame altogether and something that needs a different approach to one’s daily life without any electronic gadgets. Can you imagine such living?
I have a lot of experience unplugging during the pre mobile phone phenomenon. I used to regularly attend ten day meditation camps where contact with the outside world was completely denied and have benefitted immensely from those retreats. I doubt very much that I will be able to attend one of them now, having settled into a different life style completely.
I know some people who live without modern electronic gadgets and who seem to be blissful in their lives. I do envy them their bliss. I can’t however dream of being without my mobile phone handset and computer with an internet connection, particularly now in the lockdown sans newspapers and crossword puzzles. It is also very comforting to see that all my contacts on the also are using them to avoid climbing walls I suppose.
Having now taken a fresh look at the phenomenon and the message right on top of this post, perhaps, after the lockdown is lifted and some semblance of sanity is returned to our lives, I should give unplugging a shot to see if I will survive such an experience. When and if I do, I shall certainly make it a point to post my experience about that in this blog.
This is my take on this week’s Friday 5 On 1 blog post topic. The other four bloggers who write on the same topic every Friday are Sanjana, Padmum, Shackman and Conrad. This week’s topic was suggested by Padmum. Please do go over to their respective blogs to see what they have to say on the topic. Thank you.
Unplugged? No, what? In this time of lockdown I especially depend on my being plugged in with social media and my phone. Reading blogs is like taking a minijourney and de-stressing. By the way, I love Anne Lamott, she lives not too far from me near a beautiful mountain where my husband loved to ride his mountain bike. I am glad you are not unplugging, especially from blogging.
So am I that you aren’t either.
At this stage of my life, I also doubt that any long-term unplugging would work. Like right now. I looked forward to the insights of my compatriots. I enjoy the humor of exchanges, the warmth. To unplug would be to seek a world that is my past.
What this stage of life? You have a long way to go to come up to my level by which time of course, I would have gone further ahead!
This stage of my life is the electronically connected stage. I am not implying that I am ancient. I am young old! You are approaching middle age old … but you aren’t there yet!
I have decided that I love you Conrad.
perhaps the ‘unplugging’ advice is for people who can’t go more than two minutes without checking their devices. I don’t know anyone addicted to them like that. but I’ve seen it on the news and other tv programs enough to know that it’s very real.
and as I kick a salt addiction in my quest for healthier eating I can understand it!
Nothing perhaps about it. It indeed is.
For me when I say unplug I just mean from work, not from the internet.
I can understand and appreciate that. People who lead busy lives need that.
Shall await your promised follow up piece. Speaking for myself, staying put in one job / one location for over 3 years was tough. I always longed for a change and fortunately my wish was mostly fulfilled. Unplugging for me was the time in between. Full of excitement, fear and anticipation.
I can see where you are coming from as the times in between the assignments that I had also were unplugging times for me. And, more importantly, those days did not have the current usage levels of mass media and mobile telephony.
Unplugged for me in relation to you is the instant recall of your chauffeur in Bangalore who declared every other soul on the road as “Thala loojju”…translated roughly as having a few screws loose (loojju in his Vernacular pronunciation) in the head….
Good Lord, what recollection of that trip. Sadly, Baire died a premature death due to a heart attack not long after I left Bengaluru.
I unplug to relax, play with my dog, and recharge my batteries. In this new normal unplugging can never be fully accomplished as too many of us now have friends and contacts all around the world and staying in touch requires we be plugged in.
Yes indeed Shackman. I cannot imagine being unplugged from you and a few other webfriends.
I don’t often feel the need to unplug, but then I’ve never had an especially frantic or demanding lifestyle. In the early seventies, a friend and I went to North Wales for a few weeks, and that was a wonderfully liberating experience, free of all the usual daily pressures. I always unplug when I go on holiday – I don’t have a smartphone, I don’t take the iPad and I don’t take a laptop because I don’t have one. Again, a very liberating experience. I’ve also had two longish spells of unemployment, which I suppose were a sort of unplugging , and were a nice break from the daily grind (I had no money worries at the time so it didn’t really matter how long I was jobless).
Short and I hope sweet, I envy you.