This past Fall Break long weekend I had another chance to “unplug” from my social networking and technology. I went camping into the woods of Brown County, where there are not chargers or cell phone reception. I didn’t even take my iTouch with me. It was a 3 day 2 night excursion that made me think to blog again about the importance of technology in my life.
As stated previously, this 3 day trek into the woods had no need for technology, so the roommates and I tried to leave as much of it behind as possible. We ended up bringing our cell phones just in case. But we didn’t use them very much, maybe once or twice in order to check the time, and once in the beginning of the trip to use the map on my roommate’s Droid to find our camping spot. My roommate Cameron brought his laptop to study, but never used it except the car ride, and my other roommate Matt and I only brought our phones, but couldn’t get signal anyways.
The entire trip we commented on how nice it was to be outside the city, and outside technology. We judged the time of our days only by where the sun and the moon were in the sky. Our entertainment was sitting by the fire, hunting, and fishing with each other. We had no need to contact the outside world. Everything in our days slowed down, but didn’t lose importance. Instead of the modern world today when everyone has something different to do every 30 minutes (have to return this text/email/call, have to submit this document, have to organize my schedule), we had 3 things to do all day without interruption. Sitting by the creek fishing was my important meeting; collecting firewood was my research project.
The whole time we all felt relaxed and truly unplugged (no matter if we even needed to get in direct contact with someone, we couldn’t without a hike to get cellphone reception) compared to the other time I tried this during the school week when I felt stressed and disconnected. It is the difference between disconnected and unplugged that is interesting. Just the words imply something. When I think disconnected I think “I’ve been disconnected from the server” or something. That means I want to get on the server but have been cutoff. Unplugged on the other hand to me implies that I am the one doing the unplugging. “I’ve unplugged the computer.” This difference is what I felt. That the first time I tried this experiment I needed (or at least I think I needed) to be connected to my digital world in order to do what I needed to do in the real world. When camping, the only thing I needed to do was gather food and firewood, the connection to the digital world had no affect on my real world. I definitely felt more stressed the first time I “unplugged” and less the second time.
After the weekend I was glad to get back to civilization. First thing I did was check my phone and Facebook. But those 3 days recharged me, and it felt good for the time to not have distractions or a rush.