The new mid-life crisis: the Internet

If you were asked to step away from the Internet, could you? No, stop and think hard. Could you actually stop using your cell phone apps, maps, Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds, Skype, Facetime, Google….?

Paul Miller is a man who took the challenge. I won’t tell you how it ends. But this video is quite a project by Paul and the group at The Verge. I didn’t know anything about Paul or The Verge before writing this. In fact, I was researching tech articles, tweeting, updating my Google+ page, looking at tech blog, editing an image on Photoshop on my laptop and checking my Instagram and the office closures for this Memorial Day on Google…

…all at the same time.

Could you unplug from the Internet for a year?

This is where I came across Paul’s video and his message. It made me stop and think a million thoughts at once. As if my brain couldn’t flash through more material, it did. I thought about the dozen hours some days I sit at my desk and work. It reminded me of the sunny days in Miami I spent looking at the blue sky outside as I fumbled on my keyboard trying to figure out a single PHP coding function that that what would take a good programmer 3 minutes, takes me close to 6 hours.

Take a service member, for instance, on this Memorial Day. They are forced to shut down and jump into action without given the option. So complaining doesn’t do any good in this post.

I’ve learned a lot since the Internet butted into my life. I believe I’m better for it. But I sure has hell have missed a lot.

There are some valuable lessons to take from this video.

Full disclosure, I was going to stop watching the video at 2 minutes (due to my over-stimulated mind and habit of hyper-multitasking), draft a post and say I’d update the post after I watched it. That’s how micromanaged my time is these days. It’s a sad state of affairs. Instead, I watched the whole thing. I shut everything off, including my mind.

So if you think you’re losing track of reality by being ‘plugged in’ too much, this video may be for you.

The new mid-life crisis?

This video was a sobering look at avoiding a mid-life, quarter-life, or just a single crisis altogether by processing too much information. I truly think it happens to some people. I don’t want to be one of them.

Moderation is key. Flipping the switch ‘off’ works wonders. I just have to learn how to do it more often.

And on a much larger, and more important scale, I’d like to thank all the servicemen and women out there who’ve given up much more than an internet connection to allow us freedoms in life. It means the world.

H/T Dirk Strauss