I read a great entry yesterday on Rachelle Gardner's blog about being here now. As an inveterate multi-tasker who's been hard at work building an online presence this summer, I felt the sting of the arrow hitting the target.
Where is the fine line between using technology and being a slave to it? I just joined Facebook last week and am delighted at having made contacts with old friends, but how many hours can I spend there before it owns me? If my daughter is reading a book in the back seat of the car when she and I are going somewhere and I take that opportunity to make a call on my cell phone, am I shutting her out, or simply making good use of my time?
Several times in the past week or so, my daughter has declared that Mom couldn't go a day without her computer and Dad couldn't go a day without his iPhone. We could easily counter that she couldn't go a day without television, and if we made a bet, we could probably all do it, but what would that really prove?
I don't think the trick is doing without, going cold turkey or "becoming a Luddite" as one of my friends wrote on his Facebook wall earlier today. I think the trick today is the same as it always has been - achieving balance among all of the people, things, tasks and technologies that call to us not only daily, but minute-by-minute. True, there are more of those things than ever before, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Rachelle ended her blog with an exhortation: Just pay attention - to how and where you are spending your time. Look for your patterns.
Freedom of choice is a powerful option indeed.
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