I went to a party yesterday afternoon and stayed many more hours than I had anticipated, and honestly had many more laughs than I knew I needed.  I had my purse and my phone in the pool house and I checked my phone only twice in nine hours.  I can’t describe how good it felt, to be “otherwise engaged,” and not at all interested really in the world inside my phone…

I originally got an iphone for one reason; I often was bringing my ipod and forgetting my phone, or bringing my phone and having no music all day at work…I bought an iphone only so that I had to remember and carry just one object.  However, as we know from countless stories on the news, in the paper, and in magazines, we, well many of us, myself included, have become attached too much to our phones,  I have become one of those who does, at least several times a day, look on Instagram & Facebook, and  check my email.  Not that many years ago I only KNEW what somebody was doing if they called me on the telephone and left a message on my answering machine in my house that they were doing ‘something,’ or needed ‘something’ or wanted to tell me ‘something,’ and I only KNEW about it after the fact, because the message was left at some ‘other’ time and I did not hear the message until I pressed play…and I lived just fine back then, NOT knowing anything…emails were read at night after work, phone calls were returned, nobody needed me immediately, and I find that texting now is one of those things that most of us can’t seem to live without…

Yesterday at a party filled with friends, old and new, I realized how much I do enjoy interaction with real live people; smiling and eye contact, the sounds of peoples voices, the warmth of their laughter, and all that good humanness that is so lost in this modern world we now live in.  We swam in the pool together, we drank beverages together, we giggled together, we shared some happy stories and we shared some heart heavy stories, we ate good food, we walked to the roof deck together and looked at the sun set, while it was setting, and we interacted and it felt so rejuvenating to my very core.  This is not to say that I won’t still be a person who checks her phone throughout the day, but it is to say that I think I am going to slowly revert to the me I used to be…or at least the essence of her, who liked togetherness and who did not “need” cyber-space to feel connected, who actually connects with humans.  Yesterday reminded me how ensconced I have become in a world that is not real.  Sure, it’s in real time…I see from photographs and read in posts that somebody is on the beach, or is on vacation, or is making scallops, or is missing somebody they love, or is feeling melancholy, or is angry at somebody who hurt them, and all of these things are valid and all of these things are part of life, but yesterday, among friends, in real life and in real time, I remembered how good it feels to be physically connected, and I am going to make an effort to be more present and less cyber, and although it is certainly something of an “addiction” it is one I feel I can enjoy a little more if I take it in smaller doses…