The sun shone through the window around 9:00a.m. on Sunday morning and woke me up with a start. I realized that I was going to be late to church. Usually, I wake up around 8:00a.m., but because my cell phone was turned off, my cell phone alarm was turned off as well. This was probably the worst outcome of media free day or the best depending on your outlook on church.
As the day went on, the feeling of being media free was bittersweet. It felt very liberating to walk around without worrying about people calling and breaking into my day. I took time to eat lunch with my family, and spent a leisurely afternoon with my boyfriend and the dogs at the dog park. However, watching everyone else around me talking on his/her cell phone and checking football scores made me itch for my cell.
For the first time in quite a while, I broke out the digital camera to take pictures at the park instead of snapping them with my phone. It was amazing to see a picture that was more than an inch big, and I realized that I had been missing out in the name of convenience.
Later that night, in the spirit of taking it back to the feel of the 90's, my family dusted off the board games and we sat down to play some old-fashioned Trivial Pursuit (the 1984 Young Players Edition). It was a great night of laughing at some seriously out-dated questions and enjoying each other's company without being bothered by outside interruptions.
I won't lie and say it was easy, but it was a much-needed break from the bombardment of technology. Cell phones, i-Pods and the Internet have taken away from what we really depend on as humans: family and interpersonal interactions.