Technology or No Technology, I Don’t Know
I love technology. Specifically, I love my MacBook Air, iPhone 6, and iPad Air. I love the feel of the keyboard on my laptop, especially when I’m writing. I love the look of many of the apps I use, like Ulysses, Scrivener, and OmniFocus. I love how LaunchBar helps me move around my Mac very quickly, and I love how TextExpander helps me type faster by typing less.1 I love how so much of my administrative life can be done on my phone. For example, a friend of mine emailed me a document that I needed to sign, scan, and email back. From my phone, I opened the attachment, a .docx file, in the free Microsoft Word app, edited it, saved it, and printed it. I then signed the document, printed my phone number and the date on it, and scanned it using Scanbot. I then emailed the resulting PDF to my friend. All this was done in minutes, and that fact still blows my mind. Imagine doing that a few years ago.
As a Technology Coordinator2, I spend all my time around technology. From Windows laptops and desktops, to iPads and iPod Touch’s, to my own Apple products, I’m surrounded by it all. I spend most of my time troubleshooting and fixing these devices, but that hasn’t stopped me from loving and appreciating the amazingness these devices can do. Like the above example, technology can help us do and accomplish so much. I really don’t think I can be as productive as I am today if it weren’t for my devices. I’m writing this not too long after finishing dinner, and I’m more glad that I’m worried about having to write in a couple more journals and read a few more chapters of Don Quixote than fighting with the technology I have or worse, living in a world without these devices.
Staring into all these screens for most of the day isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. I’ve definitelynitely noticed spending less and less time outside or with other people, especially when I’m focused on some task on one of my devices. For the past few weeks, I’ve been having trouble getting to bed early because of all the things I want to do on my computer. I do need to be more conscious about limiting my screen time. I need to go outside more often, and I’m glad I get to go firefighting this summer, but that’s just a month or two out of the whole year. I live in Montana, home to nine national parks, and I haven’t visited any of them yet. I have hiking gear but I don’t use it outside of firefighting. Taking a walk just to take a walk seems so foreign to me that I don’t remember all the times I walked when I didn’t have a car and enjoying it.
This entry took a strange turn. It went from loving technology to scolding myself for using technology too much. Don’t listen to me you guys. I don’t know what I’m talking about.