I had a fascinating conversation this morning with one of my bootcampers in our one-to-one session. She’s worried about my daily blogging habit (and to a lesser extent the running).
‘You need rest days,’ she said. ‘You need days when you put all the screens away and just disconnect.’
I genuinely can’t remember the last day when I didn’t check a screen. And I’ve no plans to break the blogging streak (251 days and counting). I don’t feel it’s impacting me negatively in any way, but then maybe that’s the whole point about screen culture. Maybe I don’t even realise what it’s doing to me.
Certainly the idea of a day completely unplugged from all screens made me feel odd. Slightly panicky. Which is interesting, and piques my curiosity.
The consistency and discipline of the running/blogging streak is working for me. But I think it might be interesting, and still within a broad interpretation of the rules, to schedule a blog or two over the summer and take a totally screen-free day while we’re on holiday. The fact that I can’t quite imagine what that would be like makes me think it’s probably a good idea.
I remember a friend who deleted his Facebook account when he realised that, sat atop a rock watching the sun set over the sea before him, he was thinking not about the pure experience but about how best to compose the photo and post he’d put up as part of his carefully curated digital self. ‘Look at my wonderful life.’
It’s a sobering thought. We spend so much of our day staring at a screen: are we starting to see the world and each other through a screen too?