You can’t move for microwaves in our house, and I don’t mean of the culinary kind. Everywhere you look there is some form of technology that seems to play a growing role in our lives. This year particularly I’ve embraced more gadgets than ever although I can’t really compete with the man of the house who had undoubtedly got a lead on me.
Ever the pragmatist I like my technology to work hard for me.
My kindle helps me deal better with the long waking house I have in the middle of the night. Instead of tossing and turning I can now snuggle under the duvet and read a good book which also has the eventual effect of sending me back to sleep. It’s really helped me push through a slump in my reading although there is still nothing quite like curling up with a basset or two on the window seat to read a real book.
My iPhone means I can keep in touch with work on my “off days” without feeling like I have to break my domestic executive spell. Having an all in one gizmo – calendar, email, phone, ipod, camera, video, do list and blogging toolkit all in one has transformed my small world in the last couple of weeks.
Like all new technology it takes a while to set up and even longer to practice using. But every day I’m feeling like technology is a help not a distraction from living life. There has been times in my action packed life where I’d wished things weren’t so complicated. Keeping things simple has never really been a forte of mine but slowly but surely technology is helping me to keep things in order and bring order from what can otherwise be chaos when trying to punch above my natural productivity weight.
I don’t seem to be worrying quite as much about things I should have done or would like to do. Nothing magical there, it’s simply a case of me running out of the brain’s equivalent of RAM (random access memory, in case you’re wondering!). Since I can’t add a few gigabytes of memory into my head, my trusty iPhone provides it instead.
Of course technology can’t feed the chickens or weed the vegetable beds. Just as well as some of life’s simplest pleasures might disappear for good.