Sorry I haven’t replied to your message

Do you ever feel the need to go MIA from everyone? Go off the radar and just be on your own with little to no technology etc? Yeah, me too. Sorry I haven’t replied to your message.

I never used to feel like this, in fact, I think it’s probably lockdown that brought it on. From going to a workplace full of people, office buzzing, seeing your friends and family in person and having actual conversations, to literally every form of communication coming through your phone or laptop has probably had more of an affect on me than I had realised. I used to absolutely love texting, being in loads of what’s app groups having a geg with different groups of friends, never had my phone out of my hand and I actually loved it, just constant good craic. 

Now I get social media burn out, texting burn out and just generally fed up of constantly being on my phone and on the laptop. I would like to use part of this blog to say sorry to all of my friends who I have done this to over the past few weeks lol, I haven’t been my usual chatty self, I’ve muted you all, turned off notifications, deactivated and deleted a lot of apps, all for selfish reasons. It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you or reply, sometimes I am just like nah literally can’t cope with replying today. Managing a lot of social media accounts professionally and personally can sometimes get a bit much too, the constant ‘ding, ding, ding’, so when things in life do get a bit too much, you take a lil time out, rest, reset and we go again. 

One thing I will say, if you are trying to limit your screen time then try and limit the amount of people you talk to through apps like Instagram. We are almost tricked into using a photo sharing platform as a messaging platform now, when you get a message on Instagram, you have to click onto the Home Screen, get distracted by Instagram stories, see advertisements, go back to home page, get distracted by the newsfeed, more advertisements and then before you know it you’ve spent 45mins on an app that you only clicked on to, to message someone back. I sound like I’m really hating on Instagram, I’m not, I will still use it for messaging and it can be an amazing place I’m just saying be mindful of how you use it and the purposeful distractions that are put in place to suck you in and influence you. 

Go through your following list and make sure to unfollow anyone/anything that doesn’t produce content that educates, benefits you or that you like seeing. 

I’m going to sound old here but I’m kind of starting to miss life before advanced technology & social media. Of course I love all of the amazing tech and stuff available now, but life did seem a lot more chilled back then. Is the fact that we are always available 24/7 through a phone that is constantly filled with notifications got anything to do with our generation finding it hard to calm our minds and be present?

Now, everything is available at the touch of a button, you don’t even need to search for stuff, your phone listens to you and produces ads with out you having to do anything – which is great! But we are completely desensitised to so many aspects of life. Everything is deemed replaceable. We have a culture of swiping left and right to see if we like someone based on a 0.5 second impression of one photo. We are always looking for the next best thing. Our attention spans are whittling away. Like where does this end? It won’t, technology will continue to get more advanced, us as consumers will expect more too. Are we becoming too demanding and lazy? 

I’m feeling nostalgic now so I’m going to list off some things that I miss. Going through the Argos catalogue picking out your Christmas presents, the smell of the pages, folding the corner of the page down and circling everything you wanted and being amazed at all of it. No phone, no ads popping up, just you, your pen and your whopper Argos catalogue. 

Having to type out your own ringtones. Now some of you might be a bit too young to remember this one lol but you would have to type out the numbers to the tones for your ringtone on your Nokia 3310 😂 omg thinking back how mad was that! Having to sit for ages pressing 555 666 777 222 until you got it right. But see the feeling when the ringtone was made perfect, you couldn’t wipe the smile off your face and would get your mate to ring you straight away to listen to it 🤣 yes it was laborious, but that wee feeling of accomplishment was brilliant. 

Illegally downloading songs from Limewire and Napster. Basically ruining your computer, riddling it with viruses to get all of your favourite songs to play on Windows Media Player and watch the wacky visuals while learning the lyrics. Sometimes it would take 24 hours for one song to download. Then you would pick your favourites to burn on to a CD, so you are talking a good few days of hard work here before you got to listen to it on your hifi. But yet again, the feeling of accomplishment listening to your very own CD with all of your favourite songs that you downloaded and made – unmatched. Spotify is amazing, but I never get the same feeling that I did all them years ago with the old school methods. Yes I love the convenience and accessibility but that still will never take over the buzz from making your own CD when music wasn’t as readily available. 

Xtravision! This was always the highlight of my Friday as a kid. My dad would bring me and my sister to Xtravision and we would spend absolutely ages walking up and down the aisles picking videos to watch. Then it was in to the shop next door to get the juice, crisps and fizzy sweets. The excitement, omg it was such a class feeling. Netflix is great, but there was something about that trip to Xtravision, it was so exciting, I’ll never forget that feeling. Then you always had to make sure you rewinded the videos back before bringing them back to the shop on Sunday, what a chore 😂 Loved renting a PlayStation game too. 

Reminiscing all of that has actually made me so happy. I’m glad I did that. I’m so grateful I grew up in the 90’s just before advanced technology took over, but also very grateful to live my life now with it and all of the amazing attributes it has. I just know it’s important to be mindful of how much time I spend on it and how I use it, sometimes I forget and let it slip and let my screen time creep up but like I said, rest, reset and go again 👌🏻.

I would actually love to go really old school and start writing letters you know. That’s it. If you want to talk to me now you might have to become my actual pen pal first 😂 what a way to find out of someone is a time waster. Don’t text me with small talk – write me a letter ‘hank you 😂. 

Now I am going to go and promote this blog through all of the social media platforms that I was complaining about at the beginning 🤣 it’s about balance baby. 

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