Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts

The End of A Love Affair

From my morning journal, April 1, 2011, 6:55 am. Friday

"My love affair with my new technology, like most love affairs, has taken me on a fascinating detour from my life. Reading of other’s lives has replaced my journal writing which has been my morning meditative practice for over 3 decades. The new technology has taken me away from my focus within; from the guidance of my inner being, from my Soul Center. 

Technology makes it all too easy for me to live on the sidelines of life, watching others live out their dreams. While I may envy them, or even judge them, yet I sit and watch them whether it be spectator sports, news, or facebook. 

My affair with this new technology is now over; the crush I had on my new Android has now subsided to a place of maturity. I have learned that technology needs to serve us as a great resource and not be seen as an American Idol to be dutifully worshiped. Technology allows the drama of other people's lives to unthinkingly intrude into my thought life, hijacking my own creativity and energy."

Beginning each day by coming to the page and placing pen to paper has been my morning meditative moment.  Thirty minutes of meditative writing shifts the focus from how others live their lives to what I want in my life.

If we are to live the life we are meant to live, then we must live it fully,  We begin by asking ourselves, “What do I want?,” “What do I desire?” and “What would bring joy into my life?”

 Now, the return to the blank page asks me to go inside, find some inner experience, question, thought or insight to place on the page.    (just like artists, poets, painters, and writers)

 
Writing from the inner world is a process that allows my inner guidance to be heard. Returning to the journal each morning is simply a way of calling to the inner guides,(my software wrote ‘guys) , "I am here. I am ready to hear.”

 
My morning journal pages reconnect me to the well of spirituality that can flow into my thought life, permeating and coloring the perceptions of my ordinary life which no longer appears so ordinary. Most importantly, writing helps me keep the drama of my life on the page rather than in my relationships.


In the weeks ahead, I'm writing a series of posts describing my experiences of journaling in various places, purposes, and formats over the past three and half decades.


Often, I can tell my clients, “In the long run, journaling can be your best therapist, years after you stop coming to see me.”  Just as it takes many years to "grow good tai chi, or have yoga be our meditative practice, so it takes years to develop this same relationship with the journal process.

Next week, the first line of my first journal…

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Falling in Love With my Technology.

In the last two months, I have entered into two new relationships; one being with an Android smartphone, the other being with a dual core, dual monitor computer system.

I have had a mobile phone for my business since Sprint introduced the bag phones that plugged into the car lighter socket allowing me to talk while on in the vehicle. That was before cell phones, the size of a small brick, were considered portable.

Six weeks ago, I divorced my Blackberry Storm after a 20 month relationship that can be truly characterized as “stormy”. Imagine, a relationship with someone named ‘Storm”! What was I thinking? We never got along. I never learned to work with her.

Then, in February, a Droid X came into my life. My hands were all over her for this first month, exploring all the quirks, nuances and capabilities she had. Although it has taken a month to understand her ways, we are now partners. Not since Seven of Nine of Star Trek fame have I been taken by such a piece technology.

Yesterday, Mike installed a new ‘dual core’ processor computer into the network system at the office, setting it up with two monitors. Wow!. I love this! Just like in NCIS LA, I can drag an item from one screen to the other, and back again. Dual monitors, or dueling monitors, whatever I want.


Being such a visual person, needing more visual reminders as I have gotten older, the new system lets me take down all the taped lists and sticky notes from the edges of my monitor place them in the monitor. That gives me greater privacy, and the sticky notes won’t fall off.

What is it with us men that allows us to so easily fall in love with something that serves us so well, unquestioningly, and asks so little of us in return? Is that is our relationship style? No wonder men are upset that Verizon is dropping the “new every two” provision in its contracts.

It is difficult at times to remember the objective of all this technology is to make my life or work more efficient and creative. But, like other men, I can find myself falling in love with the hardware rather than its primary function.

Hmm……Falling in love with an object. I guess all our egos can do that, no matter what gender. Maybe, we just seem to choose different objects.

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