The Analogue Series – Part 1
As you know, I live in the countryside, surrounded by fruit trees, agricultural crops and the changing seasons. There’s always something happening outside, even when it looks as though nothing much is going on.
And yet, I can still find myself sitting on the sofa, phone in hand, scrolling through things I probably won’t remember five minutes later. Mindless scrolling, filling some need within me that isn’t really important, yet somehow feels addictive.
I might pick it up to check a message, look something up or see what’s happening in the world. Before I know it, I’ve wandered from one thing to another, following links, reading articles and looking at other people’s lives.
Meanwhile, the world outside my window has carried on without me.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy using the internet. I do. It’s an incredible resource, connecting us with people, places and ideas we might never otherwise encounter.
I love sharing my reflective stories online, my recipes, even a vegetable I’ve managed to grow successfully this season.
But somewhere along the way, something that was supposed to make life easier has also made it harder to switch off.
Messages arrive at all hours. There’s that ping that makes you drop what you’re doing to grab your phone. News updates never stop. There’s always another article to read, another post to look at, another thing we apparently need to know.
And because we can respond immediately, there’s an unspoken expectation that perhaps we should. Some people have even come to expect an instant reply.
I wonder when we started treating every notification as though it needed our attention right now.
Of course, some messages are important. Some people depend on us, and many of us have jobs, children, caring responsibilities or other commitments that make switching off difficult. It’s easy to talk about putting your phone away when you have the freedom to do so. Not everyone has that choice.
But there are times when the urgency exists largely because the technology makes an immediate response possible.
So we interrupt whatever we’re doing to pay attention to something else.
And then we wonder where the time went.
I sometimes think about all the little things I might have noticed if I’d spent less time looking at a screen. The light moving through the house from east to west. A hoopoe landing in the avocado tree next door. A dragon fruit bud opening into a flower, then fading before I’ve even had time to pollinate it.
These are the things happening around me, in real time, whether I’m paying attention or not.
None of them demands my attention. They don’t flash, beep or send a reminder.
Perhaps that’s part of the problem. The things that ask most insistently for our attention aren’t necessarily the things that deserve it most.
Living in the cortijo hasn’t made me immune. I can be surrounded by all the things I value and still get distracted by a small rectangle in my hand.
And I don’t think the answer is to throw away our phones, abandon technology or feel guilty every time we use them. That would be rather missing the point.
It takes me back to my walking. Before setting out, I check my messages, turn off my mobile data and leave it that way until I’ve reached my destination, showered and written up my paper journal.
By then, I’m ready to reconnect with the world online… on my terms.
It works for me. So perhaps the question is why I don’t adopt a little more of that discipline in everyday life.
Why is it so easy to protect my time and attention when I’m walking, yet so easy to surrender them when I’m at home?
Sometimes, I can put my phone down and go outside. Sometimes, I can leave a message until later, read a book instead of another article, or allow myself to sit with a cup of tea without feeling the need to fill every spare moment.
Small things, perhaps. But they give a little of that time and attention back.
The internet will still be there in an hour. Most messages can wait a little while. And the world, for all its noise and apparent urgency, will generally carry on turning.
I truly believe there’s a difference between being connected to the world and being so occupied by it that we forget to notice the life right in front of us.
And I’d quite like to spend a little more time noticing that, wouldn’t you?
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