How often do you read that technology is ruining humanity?
Seriously, from kids not being social to technology making us fat the list of ailments you can blame technology on if you want to is endless.
Just type in “technology makes us… “ into Google and see what comes up.
If you’d asked me yesterday about my relationship with technology I probably would have said “oh I’m not that bad” as another notification from Telstra comes through informing me of another “1GB of data for $10 for your enjoyment”.
Not that bad because I don’t consider myself a Facebook oversharer or an obnoxious tweeter or anything like that. I don’t use most of the trendy Apps like Tinder or Snapchat and I only really watch two TV shows per week.
Do I play with my phone instead of having conversations with people? Yep.
Do I pull out my phone in queues when the wait is only a minute? Yep.
Do I insta-stalk celebrities? Yep.
But with all that being said, my little pocket super computer has also had some pretty profound and life changing impacts on me.
Enter Strava, the multi sport app for cyclists, runners and swimmers keen to log every second of every activity and hopefully take away a crown for their favourite segment. Can you be “addicted”? Well the memes didn’t create themselves.
I’ve also developed a healthy love of the Podcast. I don’t see it as a negative to listen to interviews with fascinating people and learning from them during my daily commute.
And then there is Netflix.
Like I said, I don’t watch a lot of TV but I am guilty of the occasional binge watch ie watching more than five episodes of a show in a single sitting and like any other binge I tend to feel immense guilt and sadness and general patheticness afterwards.
But if I’m being truthful and not at all trendy, my real Netflix Achilles heel is the documentaries.
For the love of all things #vegan #savetheplanet #minimalism #I’mgoingtoruinyourconsumerlife
As if I don’t feel enough guilt in my life!
Since October’s perfect storm of discovering the Rich Roll Podcast and Netflix documentaries at the same time, I have gone vegan, dabbled in meditation, sold heaps of unwanted items on Ebay and still managed to maintain a full time job, train for a run a 102km ultramarathon and have a relatively healthy home life (or have I?).
I must admit , I watch a documentary, say Minimalism and I’ll ruminate about it for a couple of hours, do a quick clean out of my closet or tidy up (without throwing anything out) and “feel better” about my insane consumerist lifestyle.
So here’s my pledge, it’s currently April 2017 and for the rest of 2017, each month I’m going to watch a new documentary and actually put it into practice. I’ll document it here for all your voyeuristic pleasure.