You've Got Mail

#youvegotmail  #bobblog  #randomthoughts

"You've Got Mail".  Ah yes.  The first "notification".  Seemed harmless enough.  Hell, back in the day it was actually quite impressive.  The first few times folks my age heard it, it typically triggered a modern day "in my day" rant.  "Boy oh boy, have we come a long way.  I remember back in high school computer class (actually what it was called) we used to spend the entire hour on our Commodor 64's crunching Cobol and Fortran codes to get an oversized dot matrix printout of your name!  Hey did I ever show you how to spell boobless on your calculator?"
    
Anyway, somewhere between 1989 when AOL debuted "you've got mail" and today, I lost my affinity for the "notification".  In fact, I phuking hate the notification.  Actually I hate myself for my addiction to the notification. 

Between the hours of 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. my cell phone is always on my person.  And in those 17 waking hours I probably look at my phone 100 times.  Hey, that's less than six times an hour or once every 10 minutes...not too bad.  Actually it's frickin' horrible.  Text notifications, WhatsApp notifications, email notifications, Words With Friends notifications, SongPop notifications, Facebook notifications, Timehop notifications, voicemail notifications...it never stops!  When it's time for me to reboot, I turn on my digital clock app and prop my phone up on the nightstand where it vibrates throughout the night as important emails from Nordstrom, Amazon and Zappos roll in. 

Now I know, this is a me problem.  I am the one who has all of the notifications turned on.  I am the one who feels compelled to look at my phone every 10 minutes to see if anything new has happened.  I mean, I can't take a chance on missing someone on Facebook posting a beautiful sunrise or a picture of their effing dog, can I?  That's crazy talk. 

Ok, so the good news is, they say admitting you have a problem is the first step towards a cure or something like that.  Not sure I totally buy into that bs though because I've know for a long time that I drink more than I should and here I sit as a proud member of three wine clubs.  Anyway, I think I'm going to try and tackle my phone addiction first.  Partly because it will be easier and partly because I really like wine.  Ok...never mind...I can see this isn't going to work.  I think it's best if we don't spend too much time on fixing me.  I'm kind of a lost cause.  But for all you others...it's not too late!  Unplug.  Turn off your notifications.  Set your phone down for at least 3 hours a day.  Make it a rule to never look at your phone while your kids are talking to you.  Look out your window not at your phone when you want to see a sunrise (notice I didn't say "go outside"...baby steps...let's not get crazy).  Let's spend more time "making" memories and not "capturing" them.  Make the most of your day today!  Oh...before you do all that living in the present bullshit, please click the follow me button on this blog.  What?  I only have two followers and I think one of them is trying to sell me something!